Category: REVIEWS

The Turning: The BRWC Review. A young governess is hired by a man who has become responsible for his young nephew and niece after the deaths of their parents. A modern take on Henry James’ novella The Turn of the Screw.

If you know me, then by now you probably know that I get extremely worried about January-released films. Horror films in particular. It genuinely seems as if movie studios release their worst films in the beginning of the year in hopes that audiences will have long forgotten about it by the time the end of the year rolls around, and that is most often exactly what happens.

Don’t get me wrong though, over the years, there have been some exceptions when it comes to January films in which I have ended up liking them. For example, last January we had M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass, which was one of my favorite movies of that entire year. But The Turning is no Glass, in that it is not a good movie. It seems like the curse of January is continuing.

Floria Sigismondi’s The Turning is an extremely weird movie, but not in the way that the filmmaker had hoped for. It is weird because it shows us an endless series of events that lead to absolutely nowhere and are only there in the hopes that general moviegoers will get scared.

This is not a long film either, with a running time of only ninety four minutes. Usually when a film is that short, the film’s pacing should feel relatively quick, but The Turning feels like it constantly builds up to something that we never get. There are no payoffs here and in some ways, it truthfully betrays its audience. If you were a fan of the movie leading up to its third act, I am confident that you won’t be by the time the credits roll. I thought that the ending to the recent Grudge film was bad, but this was somehow even worse. It’s a bunch of mindless and thrill-less sequences one after another that don’t do anything for the story, nor does it do the trick to entertain us.

When it comes to the performances, they range from okay to just straight up bad. One of the decent performances in the film gratefully comes from its lead Mackenzie Davis, who portrays Kate. Although she is not spectacular in the film, she does a decent enough job at playing the main character in this story and I do think she is a greatly talented actress, but I just wish that she chose a better script to showcase her acting talent. Also decent in the film is Mackenzie Prince, who is featured heavily on the film’s posters and other marketing material, and she does an okay job at being the traditional “creepy kid in a horror film”.

But Finn Wolfhard, who portrays Miles, delivered one of the weakest performances of the film and perhaps his weakest performance to date. He not only doesn’t get a whole lot to do here, he overacted immensely which was disappointing cause I usually am a big fan of his work.

The movie does have some good cinematography though. David Ungaro has a ton of gothic and mysteriously creepy shots throughout the film and his camera work here was probably my favorite aspect of the film. But that really isn’t a good thing when the cinematography is the best part of the movie overall.

It’s just that this film is so trope-filled, jump scare ridden, and pointless, that it is extremely difficult to enjoy anything in the film, really. This could have been a much better film with a different script. This script entices viewers with a story that goes absolutely nowhere. We are shown numerous scenes that are supposed to be creepy but just aren’t, and they feel like they are only there to hopefully spook viewers, but that’s it.

The Turning drastically fails at adapting a beloved horror tale, as it is filled with tropes, weak acting, and has a story that ultimately leads nowhere.

West North West: Review. Cultures collide in Takuro Nakumara’s beautiful queer/self-discovery film West North West. The film centres on three women; a Japanese same-sex couple Kei and Ai, and a Muslim-Iranian art student Naima. Naima is quiet and unconfident, except when on the phone speaking in Persian.

These conversations are un-subtitled, with the emotion conveying the message. There is a scene early on in the film where Naima is upset on the phone in a cafe, and her emotional conversation angers the Japanese customers. This is where she meets Kei, a bartender who defends Naima’s emotional outburst and the two swiftly become friends.

During this friendship, Kei is having difficulty in sustaining her relationship with Ai, a model who. Ai is jealous and volatile, but passionate. The film follows the three women as they tackle their cultural differences, their roles in society, their sexuality and self worth. 

The film peppers in long pauses, where the characters don’t know how to speak to each other. The idea of cultural and social pressures stifling emotional acts is prominent throughout, and highlights the judgements that women still face in society. The muted colour grade throughout heightens the sense of isolation, and also reflects this emotional stifling. The lack of grand shots of the city landscape adds to the intimacy of the film. 

The performances are superb, particularly Sahel Rosa as Naima, who’s demure screen presence, and heart-string tugging performance is a pleasure to watch. This film is a thinker, and won’t leave a bruise from an action packed punch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZp1oEQ0aDk

But, it does leave you questioning your own unconscious bias, and the real difficulties of learning new things and balancing them with engraved routine and tradition.  

By Naseem Ally. ‘Handmade Puppet Dreams’ is a collection of sixteen short animated films curated by the executive producer Heather B. Henson. The work of the talented puppeteers displayed in the collection of films is a sight to behold. It’s a testament to the painstaking attention to detail they’ve taken to make these animations credible for the big screen.

These sculptures are choreographed beautifully that they move in such fluid movements. The animations are so seamless sometimes you forget that you’re actually watching an animated film. It’s done brilliantly well and what I appreciate most about it is, it’s somehow managed to carve its own niche in the genre of animated films.

I wouldn’t put this collection of films up against titans like ‘Wallace & Gromit’ or ‘Chicken Run’, but nonetheless, ‘Handmade Puppet Dreams’ has found its own lane. The first short titled ”Narrative of Victor Karloch” is a solid opener. Elijah Wood is featured as one of the characters in the short. The aesthetic work done on his character is superb, and the resemblance to the man himself is remarkable.

Almost frighteningly realistic.

His character goes on a deep-sea adventure, where we see some fantastic close-ups of his diving suit. Again, the handmade work that went into designing and creating these sculptures is awe-inspiring. Credit to the design and animation team.

Whilst watching that short in particular, I couldn’t help but think of Robert De Niro and Cuba Gooding Jr in ‘Men Of Honor’. A great film by the way if you haven’t seen it. The gold touches on the boots and diving helmet of Elijah’s character are subtle, but it gives it that added realism.

Of all the sixteen shorts my favourite has to be ”Melvin The Birder”. It tells the tale of Melvin, a lonely fellow who’s fascinated with capturing a photo of every species of woodpecker known to man. He’s on the trail for one elusive bird, and he goes to extreme lengths to spot it.

This films aesthetic is almost like a child’s drawing, but the animations used in this short really does make it the most entertaining of the lot. Also, it helps that ‘Melvin’ has a hilarious voice-over who to me at least, sounded very much like ‘Milton Waddams’ from the movie Office Space.

‘Handmade Puppet Dreams’ pretty much ticks all the boxes in terms of its overall appeal to the casual viewer. In all honesty, I can’t fault this project too much.

However, perhaps one downside of ‘Handmade Puppet Dreams’ is that a few of the shorts felt weak in terms of their storyline. Overall, it’s a refreshing take on what can be done in film and it’s an alternative of telling a story without all the pizzazz of feature-length films from studios like Mar – *cough* – vel *cough*.

Can films like this have a longterm mainstream appeal…I don’t know. But if a high brow director were to take this kind of risk, is another question altogether. To be fair, Tarantino used a decent amount of animation in Kill Bill. Perhaps some puppetry work, for Kill Bill: Vol 3?

Regardless, going forward it would be nice to see these kinds of films for a change. The ‘Handmade Puppet Dreams’ series is out on Amazon Prime in the UK and USA at the end of January.

USA: https://www.amazon.com/v/handmadepuppetdreams

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/v/handmadepuppetdreams

The Gentlemen: Another Review. Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) is an American expatriate who became rich by building a marijuana empire in London. When word gets out that he’s looking to cash out of the business, it soon triggers an array of plots and schemes from those who want his fortune.

If I am going to be one hundred percent completely honest with you, I wasn’t really all that excited for Guy Ritchie’s latest feature film The Gentlemen, and by all accounts, I should have been. Throughout the years, I have greatly enjoyed some of his films, most notably 2019’s Aladdin, which was met with mixed reviews, but I found myself genuinely enjoying it, and I was the one that thought it was going to be extremely bad. Blue CGI Will Smith genie? No thanks. But it turned out great.

But a lot of Ritchie fans absolutely adore his older films such as 1998’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and 2000’s Snatch, and I admittedly do too. What was turning me off from The Gentlemen was the trailers and the rest of the marketing. It just looked so bland and generic to me.

The trailers were not clear in what type of movie that was going to be, really. It seemed like a bunch of movies mashed into one. Plus, the posters did not help all that much either. I vividly remember when the first official teaser poster was released for this film, I thought it was a Kingsman spinoff film because the marketing was just that similar.

But now I can happily report that The Gentlemen is most certainly not a Kingsman clone, and it is also not a bunch of movies mashed into one; it is a refreshingly fun and often greatly funny story that has quite a bit of things to enjoy for almost everybody.

Something that Ritchie has always been great at doing is writing, and it is extremely evident that he wrote this film because it definitely has that Ritchie sense of style with its screenplay, and that is such a good thing. A ton of the writing is whip-smart and although it does kind of feel scripted and sometimes the dialogue doesn’t feel like things real people would actually say, a large portion of the writing was smart and often wild.

Speaking of the writing, I was surprised by how funny The Gentlemen was. The trailers did not make me laugh one bit, yet the actual film had a bunch of funny moments that had myself and many others in the theatre laughing. While most of the humor works quite well here, there are unfortunately some jokes that do not land whatsoever and actually come off with bad taste. Sometimes the jokes come across as offensive and whenever those kinds of jokes were told in the film, I actually cringed a little bit.

But the thing that I enjoyed the most about The Gentlemen is its world, sense of style, and overall story. This world feels so grimy and lived in and it felt like a place that I would not want to go to. All of the characters feel dangerous and vile. The style is not Kingsman and it is not even James Bond either. What it is, however, is somehow a bold and exciting new style that doesn’t borrow from either of those films. This does certainly feel like a crime/spy movie at times, but a unique one.

The story spans multiple characters, locations, and time periods and while it does get extremely muddled (especially later on), it was still a lot of fun to watch. The way everything ultimately played out was greatly satisfying, but I do wish the story progression was handled better, because it did often feel incredibly messy.

Also, all of the actors here do a terrific job in their roles, most notably Charlie Hunnam as Raymond and Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Pearson. Both actors completely disappeared into their roles and did an excellent job at portraying characters that seemed really difficult to play. Their natural comedic talents worked great here.

As a whole, this was a good, fun time at the movies that does have some genuinely good twists up its sleeve that I truly never saw coming. I think that there is something for everybody to enjoy with this film, and it is one that I don’t think you should miss out on.

The Gentlemen offers a bold and stylish story with fun performances, great twists and turns, and humor that works for the most part.

Recent Australian films have a knack of falling into two distinct categories. The first is picturesque dramedies that really only amount tourism ads with a story. The second is gritty and violent critiques of our past, generally intensely justified ones. The True History of the Kelly Gang ultimately rests in the latter group but is so absurd and trivial that it attempts to make a third group which sees history mutilated into a cinematic playground.

It sounds scathing to call a film absurd and trivial, but that is not my intention. The team of the director Justin Kurzel and his screenwriter Shaun Grant have combined to make something genuinely intriguing as they embrace the falsehoods they tell to maximum effect. They make it very clear in every facet of the film that none of this bar the most basic points ever happened, which creates quite a unique atmosphere. Unlike most historical fiction, this isn’t an epic. Instead, The True History of the Kelly Gang is almost a satire.

We follow the most notable Kelly of all, Ned (George MacKay & Orlando Schwerdt) from his tumultuous youth to his harrowing final days. It’s a tale of how the sins of the mother and father destroy the son, with his mother Ellen (Essie Davis), being the chief emotional manipulator of his demise. Family is everything to the Kelly’s, and his fate intertwines with them in the most tragic of ways. As Ned grows up, he attempts to leave his family behind him and chase something more significant, but when he returns, he sets in motion events which destroy his family and put him on the run.

Plenty of the narrative revolves around crossdressing, but it never develops a correlation to sexuality, rather it links to insanity. There is a discourse about how sex as a man is better in a dress, and a significant character gets his proper introduction wearing stockings and nothing else as he converses with Ned, it’s all incredibly strange. Yet the grittiness of the tale remains steadfast, and the Australian frontier is harsh as ever being spectacularly filmed by the cinematographer Ari Wegner. This generates a stark clash of themes, which works partially to the films credit seeing as how the film works best as a balancing act of tone. Remarkably this mash-up manages to work far better than one would assume.

However, as a piece of work with something to say The True History of The Kelly Gang falls a staggeringly short. There isn’t any insight into Kelly, his madness, or the period; which struggles to come to life on screen outside of the apparent fact that life was difficult. Drive is ultimately what the film lacks above anything else, what was the purpose of this endeavour into the avant-garde? The fact I cannot provide an answer to that question is the biggest issue of all. Yes, it ends as a critique of a man who is wrongly considered a legend and attempts to destroy his mythical nature. But, Australia has already heard this message, few still hold Ned in the same regard they once did, it’s rare he’ll even be mentioned in most places. This considered I’m not sure a film distorting someone so long gone, who had no grand impact on the world and what little he did fast fading, needed to be made, just read the book.

The performances are strong all round with rising star George MacKay bringing the perfect kind of crazy to the role. Russell Crowes small appearance is also enjoyable, and his encounters with Charlie Hunnam are both disturbing and hilarious. Those aside there is one man who steals the show, Nicholas Hoult as Constable Fitzpatrick who is just simply engrossingly absurd and cruel. The True History of The Kelly Gang is at its best when he’s on the screen, which is unfortunately not enough.

The True History of The Kelly Gang is a wonderfully gift-wrapped present that excites you even to look at but lets you down when you open it and find nothing.