Category: REVIEWS

IT Chapter Two: The BRWC Review.

Defeated by members of the Losers’ Club, the evil clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) returns twenty seven years later to terrorize the town of Derry, Maine, once again. Now adults, the childhood friends have long since gone their separate ways. But when people start disappearing, Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa) calls the others home for one final stand. Damaged by scars from the past, the united Losers must conquer their deepest fears to destroy the shape-shifting Pennywise — now more powerful than ever.

Back when the 2017 film It was nearing release in theatres, millions of horror fans all across the world including myself were giddy to see what director Andy Muschietti and the rest of the filmmaking crew had up their sleeves. The cast additionally looked quite promising with the likes of Finn Wolfhard, Sophia Lillis, and Jack Dylan Grazer in the film to name just a few.

The film came out and was a massive success both critically and commercially, grossing over seven hundred million dollars and is currently the highest-grossing horror picture of all time. It made a cultural impact on the horror genre like no other film had and when I initally saw it, I liked it quite a bit. I did not think it was a masterpiece, but I had a really fun time. However, over the years, I have come to love the film more and more every single rewatch. It’s a movie that is full of heart, humor, exciting sequences, and truly unnerving moments.

During the ending credits for that film, we got official confirmation that a second film would be on its way in the near future, with the closing titles reading “It: Chapter One“, much to the excitement of many. Two years later, and here we are with Chapter Two officially in theatres.

A movie this large and with this much of a following is certain to stir up quite a bit of anticipation. I wasn’t sure what to expect going into it, because of one reason. The first half of 1990 Tim Curry-lead It miniseries, where we follow the Losers’ Club as kids, is quite fun and entertaining, but I found the second half with them as adults to be, quite honestly, terrible.

Much to my shock, It Chapter Two is a horror extravaganza that is heaps and bounds better than its predecessor, a movie that is still terrific. This is a much deeper, scarier, emotional, and character driven film and it is all the better for it.

Similiar to the first one, the entire cast here that makes up the Losers’ Club is utterly wonderful. There truly is not a single performance here that is weak. Out of all of them though, my personal favorite has to be James McAvoy as William “Bill” Denbrough, the former leader of the club. Right from the first time we see him in this installment, he is very much so the same Bill from what we know, but he is significantly traumatized due to the events of the first film, particularly the death of his little brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott).

Throughout the film, it is Bill who wants to take charge against Pennywise the Dancing Clown which makes a ton of sense, as he has a deep personal connection to him. In fact, there is one scene towards the end of the second act in which Bill makes a tough choice and goes out of his way to do something, and this entire scene was absolutely riveting.

Additionally, Jessica Chastain is marvelous as Beverly Marsh who also has a troubled past, due to her many years of abuse at the hands of her father Alvin (Stephen Bogaert). This time around, Beverly is a significantly different character. She is, like Bill, deeply traumatized from everything that happened before, and I found her character to be intriguing every time she was on screen.

But when it comes to delivering pure laughs, Bill Hader, who portrays Richie Tozier, is the best at it. Nearly every time he is on screen, he has something funny to say and all of the jokes thankfully landed. They never seemed out of place and they never broke the creepy tone that the film went for. But the film also does not shy away from giving him a bunch of emotion-heavy scenes that took me completely off-guard and surprised me in all the best ways.

That is one of the greatest praises for Chapter Two – the amount of raw emotion it has. This is a far more emotional movie than the first and there are a couple of scenes in the third act where it can be hard not to get emotional. Almost all of these scenes have to do with the Losers’ Club and I loved how the film was so character driven. It actually felt like I was watching a group of friends banding together for the first time in twenty seven years.

Naturally, a lot of audiences are going to want to watch this picture to see one thing and one thing alone – Pennywise. To be completely honest, in the first film, I found him to be a rather creepy and interesting character to watch, but this time around, he is even scarier and deadly than ever. Skarsgård gives his all in this performance, and it is not hard to tell that he loves to play this character. Every single scene involving Pennywise makes for some great and wonderfully creepy moments that I will be remembering for a long time.

When it comes to issues with this film, there are really only a couple that stand out to me. Firstly, there is a scene in the second act involving Eddie Kaspbrak (James Ransone), one of Pennywise’s forms, and for some odd reason, out of nowhere, an incredibly random song plays for about three seconds and abruptly cuts out. It was so jarringly edited and thrown in the movie for seemingly no reason that it actually did take me out of the movie for a minute.

Finally, there are a couple of times in which certain characters will dump a whole pile of exposition on a character, but in all reality, it is just the screenwriters telling us important things that we need to know. It would have been nice if we had learned these things through visual storytelling.

It Chapter Two is a rare sequel that improves upon its predecessor with an invigorating cast, a compelling story, hair-raising scares and heart-wrenching emotion.

TREACLE: A short, sharp film with some sickly sweetness as the title suggests. Treacle (dir. Rosie Westhoff) shows us the meaning of too much of a good thing.

The two sole cast members Jesse (Ariana Anderson) and Belle (April Kelley) have great chemistry and strong performances. Jesse is recently single, and has enlisted Belle to be her fill-in for a romantic getaway she’d ill-planned with her soon to be ex (male). The two girls jump in a car and drive up the SoCal coast, and we follow the breakdown of their relationship over 24 hours.

Their best friendship is easily believable, backed up by the continual insults and silly banter. They while away their time drinking and swimming, which eventually leads to Jesse leaning in for a kiss. They hook up, and in the bright morning light their decisions from last night come back to haunt them.

Belle is bisexual – a sticking point throughout for Jesse. She seems almost homophobic in her understanding of sexual orientation, which is probably why Belle feels so betrayed at her cold feet the next morning. A drunken hook up for a straight girl, a deep betrayal for a bisexual one. The car ride back shows them both in separate shots, compared to the warm, wide shots of the drive up at the beginning. The cracks have formed and are large between them. 

TREACLE – TRAILER from Cat Dragged In Films on Vimeo.

The film achieves it’s aim – to give a story to the ‘B’ in LGBTQ. The acting is strong, particularly from Kelley who also wrote the script and, if I may, is most likely drawing from her personal well. 

A thoroughly modern story of romance, confusion and sexuality. Treacle is sweet, sickly and lets the message lingers in your mouth after the credits roll. 

Brad (Peter Mayer-Klepchick) and Dylan (Cameron Duckett) are in a lot of trouble. They’ve been tied to chairs, tied to each other and they’re now sitting at the bottom of an empty swimming pool. The night before they were approached by a beautiful woman named Meg (Nicole Dambro) who wanted to get really drunk with them. However, they soon find out that Meg is the one who has tied them up and is going to torture them until she gets the results that she wants. It also doesn’t hurt that Brad and Dylan are two homophobic jocks and Meg is set on changing their minds.

Groupers is the feature debut from writer/director Anderson Cowan. Supposedly the premise for the film was devised on an episode of a podcast that Cowan co-hosts. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much of a thought beyond that.

When Meg kidnaps and starts to torture the men there is clearly a conflict in the way that she is trying to conduct her ‘research’. Whereas the two men clearly deserve some kind of retribution for their behaviour, as soon as the twist is revealed the film starts to lose its appeal and the potential discussions that could have surrounded the film fall flat.

Groupers could have opened a deeper discussion on the causes of homophobia and could have talked about the morality of trying to stop abuse and violence with abuse and violence but unfortunately, I don’t believe the filmmakers thought that deeply. On the one hand there are a couple of gay characters which could have aided in the discussion of homophobia, but there are also a lot of other characters introduced (seemingly at random) who are as abusive and violent as Brad and Dylan and this is supposed to be part of the joke. The point is that it feels like Cowan thought that his initial premise wasn’t strong enough to carry an entire film, so threw in some quirky characters to liven things up.

Groupers Teaser #1 from Anderson Cowan on Vimeo.

Unfortunately, adding new characters seems to do the opposite as the second half makes the pace feel slow and frustrating. Characters talk across each other and there doesn’t really feel like a natural conclusion until the dialogue stops because it seems like Cowan doesn’t feel qualified to have a deeper discussion. Saying all this though, Dambro gives a good performance and the chemistry between the two jocks makes them strangely likeable (despite the homophobia). However, once Cowan has run out of ideas with what to do with them, Groupers feels over indulgent and erratic. Thankfully though, the film doesn’t delve too deeply into torture porn as its premise suggests.

Groupers is an original idea that runs out of juice, never saying anything clever or insightful about its subjects. The initial idea may have seemed funny in a juvenile kind of way, but Cowan never really settles on his opinion of the bullies. If Cowan’s idea was to show a discussion where everybody is shouting their opinions at each other and nobody benefits like is so often the case online, then mission accomplished. Unfortunately, this doesn’t translate well to film and before Groupers is over the audience may want to distract themselves with something else.

Offside is a new documentary from film maker Miguel Gaudêncio. The documentary follows a group of women for the female Polish football team. During the documentary we see the grueling training that they must go through for the pre-season. Their coach puts them to the test, pushing them to their outer-most limits – making for a taxing, difficult, yet ultimately necessary and rewarding experience for these women.

Offside is not exactly something that would interest me usually. I have little to no interest in football myself – I know, a rare thing for a British man. I have never really gotten into it or even see much of the appeal of the sport myself. But then again, in my spare time I sit on my sofa and press a few buttons which makes little graphics on my TV move somehow, so who am I to judge. I do understand the passion that people can feel for it, and honestly, it’s great to see.

Here in Britain it is something that, seemingly, the whole country can get behind and feel united with. It is and always will be a huge thing and, particularly over the last few years, female football has become larger and more respected. Now it is almost as huge as male football, so I think that Offside has come out at the opportune time.

Something that I must add is that this documentary is in Polish. As such, viewers who do not speak Polish will need to turn on the CC for subtitles. This would be an essential point anyway, but considering that this is an entirely narration and on-location based documentary, I can’t express that point enough. This did have the extra issue for me that it wasn’t too nice to look at visually.

Documentaries are a whole different kettle of fish to movies and TV. There isn’t always the prep time required for TV and none of the flashy effects or top of the line equipment of Hollywood for them. It’s also quite distasteful at times to mess with what has been given. But it didn’t change the fact that this was likely filmed on the fly and felt like it.

Offside is shot in black and white. I honestly didn’t understand why. I found that it didn’t aid the film stylistically, in fact it did the opposite – throughout I was only thinking, why is this in black and white? It also made the on-location feel less authentic. It is unfortunate because I did find what these young women went through to be interesting.

On the whole it is a very inspiring film. It shows how far we can go to achieve what we want, or at least have a good shot at what we want. It shows how little status and prejudice means – not just in the feminist way, but for anybody out there. It also demonstrates well how sometimes we need a push in order to get there, and how much or how little we can take. It is grueling but can ultimately be rewarding.

I feel that this is an excellent message, and sports – especially one like football – are a fantastic way to express this kind of uplifting message. I do feel like, for me, the technical of the film got in the way – how it was shot and the unnecessary lack of colour hurt it for me. It wasn’t for me in the end, but I can see the audience and I know that this will be loved. I sincerely hope that it does go on to inspire many more along the way.