Author: Joel Fisher

Ethan (Garrett Hedlund) is a tutor and despite his low paying job, he’s living happily with his wife, Annie (Victoria Justice) and they have a baby on the way. Then one night, Ethan gets a tip off about a highly paid job and all he must do is stay for a week and tutor Jackson (Noah Schnapp), the son of a billionaire.

So, Ethan goes along with it, thinking that it’s going to be easy money. However, Jackson isn’t exactly what Ethan would call a normal boy and despite some odd behaviour, he carries on the best he can to do his job. However, once the job is over and Ethan can go back to his life, he realises that his lesson isn’t over with Jackson.

The Tutor is a psychological thriller directed by Jordan Ross and written by Ryan King. Something that may evoke films such as Fatal Attraction and The Hand that Rocks the Cradle is given a somewhat modern spin with a young male antagonist on the tail of an unsuspecting older man.

The problem is that it doesn’t seem to make much sense and a lot of the time, the audience may be shouting at their screens as Ethan ignores reality, seemingly unable to do the sensible thing which would stop the events from escalating.

This makes him a character who is very easy to stop sympathising with, as you realise that if only he’d called the police sooner, then none of the things that happen in the movie would have taken place.

Then there’s the finale which further takes liberties with logic and seems to throw in twists and plot points for no good reason. Getting to the point where Ethan and Jackson’s roles switch around so much that for a moment, it’s hard to decide who to support.

The Tutor is a movie which has an obvious set up and tries to do something original with a familiar format. Unfortunately, in trying to reinvent the wheel, it tries to do something so different with the genre that it ends up becoming a confusing mess where audiences may not know how to feel.

William Henry Deveraux Jr. (Bob Odenkirk) is a college professor and chairman of the English department in a college where he feels his life is going nowhere. Then one day he has an argument and tells a rather pretentious student, exactly what he thinks of his work and the college.

Fearing he may get cancelled, William’s wife, Lily (Mireille Enos) tells him that he had better do the right thing, something especially troubling considering she’s also the vice principal. However, when she sees the look on her husband’s face, it suggests that William may be on the verge of a change.

Lucky Hank is the new drama on AMC which brings back Odenkirk from the meteoric success of Better Call Saul which arguably even surpassed its predecessor. However, fans expecting a cheeky and charming performance from Odenkirk may be disappointed as they find a middle aged man on the edge of going nowhere and finally realising it.

Thankfully though, Bob Odenkirk is the pull for the show and the reason audiences may stay. Because in other hands, William may seem too depressive of a character to support, but, Odenkirk brings out the humanity and the humour in the script which audiences may recognise in themselves. Especially if they’ve got as far as they can and don’t know where to go.

This may also be reflected in the show itself though, because having watched the first two episodes, it may not be entirely clear on what it wants to be. Adapted from Richard Russo’s book, Straight Man, the show gets off to a strong start, but as the second episode closes then audiences may not understand what it wants to be.

It’s clearly not a straightforward laugh out loud comedy as audiences may expect, the dialogue is witty and there are some interesting observations on how people act even when they don’t realise it themselves. However, there still needs to be a hook and if audiences can’t define the show themselves then they may switch off.

Although like a good novel, good television takes a while to fully tell its story and it seems that is what Lucky Hank is attempting to do. Hopefully it will do so without pandering to those just looking for an easy watch.

Alfie Deyes (Rhys Yates) is a social media influencer and he’s living his best life. He’s just started at college and he’s ready to tackle it head on – as long as there’s a camera in front of him to document everything.

There he meets a group of people and feels particularly drawn to Amber (Erin Austen) and after a few drinks, the usual kind of student shenanigans occur. However, Alfie soon finds out that they’re not alone in the house because they keep seeing strange things out of the corner of their eyes. After a while, they’re convinced that the dorm is haunted. Good thing that Becky (Nina Wadia) is there to make sure the teenagers are in a safe space.

Followers is a horror comedy about a group of students trying to capture footage of a ghost. Done in a found footage style, Followers goes from Alfie’s own videos where he talks about how great it is to live in a haunted house to his followers who lap up everything he says. However, in terms of plot and the target audience, Followers feels a little confused.

There seems to be an attempt at making a horror movie for the older teenage market who may be the kind of people who thought about being influencers themselves. However, if that was what was intended, then the jokes may grate a little as it often comes across as patronising.

It feels as if it was written by an older person who only had a vague idea of what social media life was like and doesn’t have a very good opinion of it either.

Then there’s the plot which has many directions in which it goes in, but not very many of them are tied up or even followed up on later. This often makes the movie feel like a pack of cards which have been thrown up into the air and then laid out in whatever order they landed.

Ultimately, Followers feels far longer than it should and seeing that it doesn’t even hit the ninety-minute mark, it clearly exposes its problems.

Kubrick By Kubrick: Review.

Stanley Kubrick was arguably the most influential director of all time. From classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Spartacus and The Shining, Kubrick showed an eye for cinema and an eclectic range of films whose reputations preceded even the director himself.

However, he wasn’t afraid to court controversy and films such as Lolita, A Clockwork Orange and his final film, Eyes Wide Shut would show that he was ready to expose his audience to the darker side of humanity.

Kubrick by Kubrick is a documentary about the famously reclusive director, finding as many recordings from actors, critics and even Kubrick himself to tell the story of his career. Starting out with an interview with French film critic, Michel Ciment, audiences are treated to rare snippets from interviews Ciment did with Kubrick per his request.

Such a unique opportunity, and one that many a film fan would jump at the chance of experiencing, Kubrick by Kubrick lets the audience hear from the man himself. Thoughts on the various films in his career as well as his theories on what makes a good film are explored. Putting these amongst other interviews with actors he has worked with, the documentary attempts to get an idea of who he was.

Serving as a eulogy to his life and his career, the film is not just a talking heads documentary with a group of people pouring praise on one of the best filmmakers in history. Instead, it talks about his career with as much knowledge as it can considering Kubrick’s own shyness into what goes into his filming process.

However, this means that a lot of the time the documentary feels like it’s telling the audience what they already know about his career and not so much about his life. The only major turning point in his life that is mentioned is his death and perhaps it could have done without Tom Cruise’s sole reaction to that event.

What little insight that could be gathered can be found here, but film enthusiasts may realise that most of it they may have already read about themselves.

Carmen (Aline Küppenheim) is a reasonably well of woman because of her husband’s profession as a doctor. She decides to go away to their beach house in Chile while her husband is working and there she is reacquainted with Padre Sanchez (Hugo Medina) who needs her help to after a wounded man who has claimed sanctuary with him.

She meets Elias (Nicolás Sepúlveda) and he comes across as quite different from what she was expecting. She thought that only a criminal would go to such lengths as to seek sanctuary from a priest, but as she gets further involved in Elias’ problems, she finds that life under the rule of Augusto Pinochet has hidden depths.

1976 is a political thriller directed by Manuela Martelli and co-written by Alejandra Moffat. Putting her a lone woman in such a potentially dangerous situation, director Martelli in her feature debut, attempts to show her home country and its troubled past through her eyes.

An outsider, unfamiliar with the political regime that the country found itself in in the late Seventies, 1976 shows Carmen’s eyes being opened to a situation she cannot control.

Once she gets an idea of what Elias is facing, then her worldview completely changes. What we see of her everyday life outside of caring for the wounded man is ordinary enough, but the pulsing synth score tells the audience that everywhere she goes and whoever she talks to may land her in trouble.

It’s unfortunate then that 1976 relies so heavily on this score to tell a story. There may be an underlying sense of danger and paranoia, but it seems that director Martelli believes that this will be enough. Kuppenheim gives a good enough performance, but the direction feels somewhat lacking, both from the first-time feature director and from the plot itself.

By keeping a certain sense of reality and not making the situation in Chile at that time feel overdramatised, unfortunately 1976 lacks any sense of pace or urgency. Of course, it may help to know about the history of the country before watching, but the desperation of the situation is never properly conveyed.