film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Author: Joel Fisher

  • Off The Rails: Review

    Off The Rails: Review

    Kate (Jenny Seagrove), Liz (Sally Phillips) and Cassie (Kelly Preston) are mourning the loss of their best friend. They all grew up together, but have gone their separate ways and are all living very separate lives. However, what they soon realise that their lost friend is going to bring them all together one last time. 

    That’s because their friend’s dying wish was to get them to recreate their inter-railing travels across Europe as they did in their youth. There’s a catch though – they have to take their friend’s teenage daughter, Maddie (Elizabeth Dormer-Phillips) with them.

    Off The Rails is a comedy drama and the feature directorial debut of Jules Williamson with a script by Jordan Waller. Luckily, the film knows exactly what it is and the feel-good story of friendship and lost youth will resonate with many. However, there are some issues depending on how willing you are to connect with the story and believe in the characters. 

    Firstly, there’s a certain feeling that director Williamson obviously wanted to create; that of a whimsical whistle stop tour of Europe punctuated with nostalgia for those who were teenagers in the 80’s. The trouble is that despite the great cast, it seems that their names are not enough to make the audience believe that they are life long friends. Least of all Kelly Preston who while putting in a good performance, feels out of place.

    There’s also the matter of the soundtrack and for fans of Blondie then you may be in luck. However, even for the most diehard Blondie fan it may start to grate. This is because as the soundtrack plays their greatest hits every five minutes, it may distract some fans as they start to wonder what they’re going to play next and what’s been left out. 

    This is particularly distracting from the plot and noticeable when the soundtrack seems to run out of songs and repeat one from earlier.

    Off The Rails certainly knows what kind of audience it wants to be and that may its downfall. Because it all feels like a rather cynical attempt at making its audience connect with the characters by blasting them with a nostalgic soundtrack while throwing scenes of enforced fun in their faces. 

  • Heart Of Champions: Review

    Heart Of Champions: Review

    Alex (Alexander Ludwig) is the captain of his Ivy League college’s rowing team. He has a lot on his shoulders as his father is hoping that his athletic efforts will take him to the Olympics, but Alex’s attitude leaves something less to be desired. This has a knock-on affect on the team and by the time their new coach, Jack Murphy (Michael Shannon) is brought on, they could hardly be called a well-oiled machine.

    So, it’s Coach Murphy’s job to bring the team together and have them working as one. However, the team all have their own problems and as they come closer together, their personal issues drive them apart.

    Heart of Champions is a sports movie directed by Michael Mailer and executive produced by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. Taking a familiar setting for the Winklevoss twins and the format that many sports movie fans will enjoy, Heart of Champions gives its audience just what they were expecting, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have flaws.

    There’s the typical formula of a dysfunctional sports team who are brought together and inspired by a grizzly, yet lovable coach. The team also have their own characters that either find they can relate to each other in unusual ways or learn to accept their differences. There’s even the occasional montage which shows their team building efforts. However, where Heart of Champions’ script follows all these familiar tropes, it shows itself up by not going deep enough.

    There are a lot of people in a rowing team, perhaps too many to really focus on when making a film on them. This means that the film decides to follow a select few, while the others get ignored entirely. This may be all well and good, but when a large portion of that time is focussed on a romance between Chris (Charles Melton) and Nisha (Ash Santos), then it becomes glaringly obvious how many have been left out.

    This also comes to a head during a pivotal moment in the movie’s final act when a character who has been given so little screen time so far, becomes the one to rally the team to work together.

    Add to that Alex’s clichéd story of rich privilege and another character casually mentioning that he’s a recovering alcoholic and it’s just not enough to make a story. So, where it should be a rousing story of triumph and teamwork – it fails.

  • The Pebble And The Boy: Review

    The Pebble And The Boy: Review

    The Pebble And The Boy: Review – John’s (Patrick McNamee) father has just died. There wasn’t much of a connection between John and his father, but he knew he loved music and he was a Mod for life. His dad had even left him his old Lambretta scooter, so despite their differences, there was still something to pass on to the next generation.

    Then one day John meets Nicki (Sacha Parkinson) and her love of life and carefree spirit pulls John in another direction that he wasn’t expecting. Nicki is also a mod and has inherited the love of music and in particular Paul Weller and The Jam. That’s when John comes in for another surprise as he finds two tickets to see Paul Weller in concert, and he has a number of days to get there.

    So, off John and Nicki go on their scooters and as John meets some of his father’s friends along the way he not only realises that he knew nothing about his father, but a dark secret about him has been hidden for years.

    The Pebble and The Boy is a British feel-good film written and directed by Chris Green and serves as a love letter to the mod lifestyle and the music. Although thankfully it doesn’t try to replicate the success of Quadrophenia, it perhaps works as a spiritual successor where it brings the music to a new generation.

    The story of Pebble and The Boy is pleasant to watch and has plenty of characters along the way that feel authentic and come close to how Mods were and who they became as they got older. In particular, Ricci Harnett’s portrayal of an aggressive, no-nonsense father may remind people of someone they know that fully embraces the the Mod lifestyle.

    However, there is also a certain amount of predictability, although the film is watchable enough so that it doesn’t matter. Even with Nicki, the manic pixie dream girl, there’s just enough there to subvert the cliché and bring it back to reality.

    The Pebble and The Boy may be best appreciated by those who want to feel the nostalgia of the days on Brighton beach where all that mattered was the music. However, there’s just enough there for people who weren’t and just want to watch a good story.

  • The End Of Blindness: Review

    The End Of Blindness: Review

    Blindness is a condition which can be caused in many ways. It could be a degenerative disease which could be genetic, it could be a condition that occurs when somebody is young after not getting the proper treatment. It could even be an infection that gets out of hand and in most places, it could be easily treatable before it becomes permanent.

    The End of Blindness is a documentary that follows Dr. Samuel Bora as he travels around rural Ethiopia to provide free cataract surgery to those people who have been affected where their conditions could have easily been cured.

    Written and directed by A.J. Martinson in his documentary debut, there are many interviews with experts on such eye conditions, with Dr. Bora himself and with the patients before and after their surgery that puts their lives back together. Travelling to Ethiopia, a deep voiced narrator tells the story of Dr. Bora and his patients and at first it may feel like a charity appeal.

    Although after a while it starts to explore Dr. Bora’s motivations and becomes much more of a personal story where he’s giving back to a community that gave him so much.

    Unfortunately, the documentary does paint sight loss as the end of life for many Ethiopians and although there is light at the end of the tunnel, it would have been nice to have shown some effort to help people to cope. Although when the operations for Dr. Bora’s various patients both young and old are a success, it will make the audience feel good.

    There may also be a little bit of a direction which suggests to the audience that powerful white American doctors have come to save the day, although thankfully besides a little patronising, the documentary focuses solely on Dr. Bora’s work. The End of Blindness is the kind of story that may have been told many times in many documentaries and films.

    In films, the depiction of a white doctor saving a less fortunate group of people in a third world country may have been the focus. Thankfully though, the documentary helps to break that stereotype and show intelligent, talented people such as Dr. Bora helping others.

  • Ankle Biters: Review

    Ankle Biters: Review

    Sean Chase (Zion Forrest Lee) is a Canadian hockey star, although he’s more infamous for nearly beating a rival team’s player to death. Then he meets Laura Haywood (Marianthi Evans) and it was love at first sight.

    A whirlwind romance starts and then Laura introduces Sean to her daughters – all four of them. Unfortunately, Laura’s daughters don’t take too well to Sean and are suspicious from the start without even knowing about his violent past. However, when they see a video of Sean and Laura engaging in a bit of rough play during sex, they decide to hatch a plan. They need to get rid of Sean and murder is on their minds.

    Ankle Biters is a horror comedy written and directed by Bennet De Brabandere with a story from Zion Forrest Lee. Whereas the premise of such a film is interesting in its concept as it has the potential to be a comedy of errors with a dark twist, the execution is not as good as it could be.

    Using children in horror is a difficult task, on the one hand if they’re the victim then they are more than likely to survive, but if they are the villain then there must be some kind of twist to exonerate their actions. Unfortunately, it seems that Ankle Biters takes itself far too seriously and where there is potential for comedy, horror takes over.

    Perhaps cleverly casting real sisters in the film adds to the authenticity of their performances because the Reid sisters all do very well, although there is little to distinguish them in terms of their personalities. This leads to an unbelievable situation becoming more traumatic and disturbing than funny though. This is because there’s not much of an indication between them that what they’re doing is a bad idea.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SSyO0obS6Y

    Similarly, although the movie does start to paint Sean in an ambiguous light at the beginning, he soon becomes a victim to the mischievous little girls’ plans and the audience may stop laughing.

    Ankle Biters would have been better if it were played more for laughs and if the film didn’t go so dark. However, it seems that the lust for blood overshadowed the laughs.