We all love films here, but we don’t love all films. As part of the #BRWC10 extravaganza, let us present to you the 10 Worst Films of the last 10 Years.
(Disclaimer: I’m not a professional film critic, and I don’t go out of my way to watch films I know I’ll hate. So you won’t find any Adam Sandler films, or movies about emojis here, purely because I wouldn’t subject myself to them. I went into all these films in good faith).
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Batman has always had his ups and down at the cinema, from Tim Burton’s gothic theatrics to Joel Schumacher’s lurid turkeys; and after Christopher Nolan’s game-changing trilogy, The Dark Knight was due to go downhill. Yet I still wasn’t prepared for this lumpen mess of smudged CGI and noise. Performances are charmless and humourless throughout, and not even a spirited cameo from Wonder Woman can save the day here.
The Greasy Strangler
I must have missed the joke with this film. While many trumpeted it as a wicked slice of subversive comedy-horror, this boring, repetitive and tasteless trash felt to me more like a deluge of sewage. The film deserves a place on my shit-list just for getting the ‘Hootie-Tootie Disco Cutie!’ song stuck in my head for a week. Bullshit artist!
2018’s Oscar winning short film. Reposted from January this year, as part of #BRWC10.
From the start, it’s not immediately obvious what The Silent Child is about. It opens with a woman riding a bike down country lanes to a slow and mysterious piece of music, which immediately creates a sense of unease. Is that an indication of what’s to come? (In short, no.)
It transpires the cyclist, Jo (Rachel Shenton, who also wrote the film), is travelling to the family home of three-year-old Libby (Maisie Sly), who is deaf. Jo is there to assess Libby’s needs and begin teaching her sign language ahead of her starting school. While normally quite inanimate and stoic because of her inability to communicate, Libby’s personality changes dramatically as she gets to grips with fingerspelling, and at the same time she starts to form a close bond with Jo.
As she does, however, her mum (Rachel Fielding) starts growing concerned. She wants to wean Libby off sign language and get her used to lip-reading, but with no obvious reason for doing so. Maybe she feels her position is being threatened, maybe she doesn’t like the stigma of being seen fingerspelling. Whatever the reason, her increasing hostility to accept that her daughter needs help makes her highly resistant to Jo and her
The film does well to portray the isolation of deafness and how a disability in a family can cause friction – which will resonate to anyone with any experience of this – but unfortunately its ending lets it down. While it’s the most realistic conclusion to events, the tone of the film hints that something more unexpected is coming, and it’s somewhat disappointing when it doesn’t.
Also, there are other plot elements introduced – Libby’s real parentage, tension in the family caused by Jo’s presence – that would be worth exploring but are ultimately ignored, which makes you wonder why they were introduced to begin with.
On a technical level, The Silent Child is very well photographed by Ali Farahani, whose crisp visuals help to convey the realism of the film as well as drawing us in. At the same time, a convicted and anchoring performance from Shenton adds much integrity and earnestness to the film. It’s obvious, from her performance and her script, that this is subject matter very important to her, and she’s giving it her all.
Against the film, however, is Amir Konjani’s score, which feels out of place. The Silent Child is in essence a quiet true-to-life drama with a dark undertone, but it has the accompanying music of a thriller. It’s easy to get the wrong idea of what to think and expect from the film from its score.
The film ends with the startling statistic that more than three-quarters of deaf children have no support at school, and it’s admirable of the film to try and bring attention to a worthwhile cause. The Silent Child has heart and is thought-provoking, which is enough to transcend its imperfections and make a viewing more than worthwhile.
Paddy Chayefsky wrote Marty in 1953. The romantic drama tells the story of a middle-aged butcher who lives with his mother and longs after a loving relationship. It was Chayefsky’s ode to the common man, his Barton Fink moment, if you will. Rod Steiger played the lead in the original teleplay and his performance was praised for being a stark, simple portrayal of a lonely man.
Mads Matthiesen’s 2012 Danish drama Teddy Bear owes a lot to Chayefsky’s teleplay. Whether purposefully or coincidentally, they both share similar themes, similar ideas and similar central performances. But they also share an honesty.
There’s a moment in Teddy Bear where Kim Kold’s lonely bodybuilder Dennis sits across the table from his mother and tells her what he really thinks. It’s a quiet moment, shot simplistically with no emphasis on style, and in a lesser film might feel simply like any other scene but in the hands of Matthiesen it’s elevated and the tension that has been subtly bubbling under the surface of the film threatens to explode. It never does, but the scene is tense none the less.
This calmness is Teddy Bear’s biggest success as a movie. Nothing here is explosive or shocking or particularly all that interesting or original, but it’s shot with such care and honesty that it’s difficult not to enjoy. The story itself is pretty much a straight coming of age tale. At the age of thirty-eight Dennis still struggles to form relationships. In the hopes of growing up and becoming his own person he leaves his overbearing mother at home and heads to Thailand in search of love.
It’s simple, it never twists, and it’s not got an awful lot of surprises along the way, but it’s sweet and honest and there is a sincerity about it that captures our attention.
A lot of this, to be fair, is down to Kold. He plays Dennis with a heart and a sensitivity we don’t often get from protagonists of his size. It can be a little jarring but at the same time you can’t help but warm to him. He’s so sweet and loveable that any fault within the film just seems to melt away beneath his performance. He’s the Teddy Bear of the title, a gentle giant who wants nothing more than to grow up and be his own man.
And don’t get me wrong, the film does have its flaws. At certain points it becomes difficult to believe Kold’s Dennis could really be so out of touch. He misunderstands what is an obvious arrangement with a prostitute as being some kind of date, and then later he returns to where he was introduced to her without recognising the establishment for what it is. But when Kold spends every moment looking like he’s either going to burst under the anxiety of social interaction or run away and hide until all the people have gone you simply can’t help but align yourself with him.
The entire film is better simply for Kold’s performance, and he really is quiet something. Since Teddy Bear he’s appeared in both Fast & Furious 6 and Star Trek Beyond, but he’s severely under utilised in both. He has a presence on the screen that goes further than simply his performance. And while it is a wonderful performance in and of itself, Kold is just watchable, and that’s something that goes a long way to making everything here feel more purposeful and more engaging.
Shot with a stark realism but filtered through an almost dreamlike lens, the film continues to flow along at its own pace, for the most part it’s almost silent, and never forgets to keep its focus on our hulking protagonist. In a way it reminded me of Wes Anderson. Not so much in style, this is a far more simply shot and realistically composed movie, but in that awkward way that people interact without saying what they really mean.
When Dennis’ elderly mother Ingrid (played by a vicious and spikey Elsebeth Steentoft) is so bluntly honest about how she feels it throws us off guard, placing us firmly in Dennis’ shoes. But even she, by the end, has been cast in a solemn and sympathetic light. She’s not the monster we’ve been led to believe but instead just an old woman terrified of being left alone.
It’s not that there’s anything here that’s going to drastically alter the way you view the world or the way you view cinema, it never does anything particularly unique or impressive, but it’s a simple tale told incredibly effectively, and that’s something we don’t see much of these days. Perhaps there’s more of Chayefsky’s Marty than I originally gave it credit for, and perhaps an engaging coming of age drama in 2018 is as much about looking back to the past as it is about its characters looking toward the future.
If somehow you’ve managed to get through the late 90s and early 2000s without watching an episode of the TV series Sex and The City, this movie may help you catch up.
The iconic show featured four single women in their thirties and their hilarious and at times uncomfortably graphic conversations about sex and relationships. Aired first in 1998, it was revolutionary as it normalized sex talks amongst women on TV and the lives of main character sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), along with man-eater Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), good girl Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) and love cynic Miranda Hobbs (Cynthia Nixon) became a cultural landmark for females across the globe.
Love in Manhattan, as Carrie put it in that first episode, was characterized by the age of un-innocence, where no one had breakfast at Tiffany’s or affairs to remember. Instead, they had breakfast at 7am and affairs they tried to forget as quickly as possible. Carrie reassured us that self-protection and closing the deal were paramount, as Cupid had flown the co-op.
The TV show was a representation of the 90s, that golden decade of Girl Power where women took what they wanted, “what they really, really want”, as the Spice Girls were chanting at the time. Or, as journalist Cosmo Landesman put it recently, “it was a fun-fuelled feminism for the mainstream; a materialistic and hedonistic celebration of female assertiveness, ambition and self-reliance. Girl Power was Thatcherism in sexy underwear”.
Fast forward ten years, and things couldn’t have been more different; 2008 was the year when the world shivered from a global financial crisis likened to the Great Depression of the 30s. Gordon Brown was the UK’s prime minister and, across the pond, Barack Obama was a mere presidential hopeful, which would eventually see him become the first ever black president later that year. Newcomer Adele’s debut album was topping the charts singing about heartache and relationships and Amy Winehouse was still alive.
Match.com and the likes were carving multi-million pound businesses out of lonely hearts desperate to find the one. The fear of facing these depressing times alone pushed some men and women to think that perhaps it was time to settle for second best, rather than face this doomed future alone – or at least that’s what psychotherapist and writer Lori Gottlieb believed when she published her essay “Marry him! The case for settling for Mr Good Enough”, later turned into a book and mercifully criticised left right and centre, calling her pathetic, desperate and sad. And yet, it felt as though Gottlieb’s theory had tapped into a sore spot for women in their 30s and 40s.
Neither Tinder nor Bumble had yet been invented and it felt as though women had lost their confidence, waving goodbye to Carrie Bradshaw to embrace Bridget Jones.
And that’s when Sex and the City: The Movie was premiered in the UK. Despite a bag of mixed reviews, hordes of fans embraced it just as much as the TV series, as it became a commercial success, grossing over $415 million worldwide.
Sex And The City
The highly anticipated film literally picked up where it left things off at the end of the series with its happy ending for all the characters. Carrie in the movie finally marries her wealthy, older man who had seemed so unattainable throughout the 94 episodes of the TV series. Or so we are led to believe. But, when it comes to Sex and The City, things are never quite as straight forward as that.
The blockbuster opens with Carrie Bradshaw happily skipping through New York and down memory lane featuring flashbacks from the TV series recapping the previous ten years. We ooohs and aahs as we reminisce on how Charlotte the romantic always looking for the one ended up marrying a not so perfect husband with issues in the bedroom before settling with her divorce lawyer and adopting a baby. We then see Miranda the ever so sceptic lawyer who got pregnant after a one night stand with a bar tender and, after a tumultuous personal journey, realises that she was in love with him all along and ends up walking down the aisle. And Samantha had finally curbed her insatiable sexual appetite and her wild antics when she, too, finds ever lasting love.
Twists and turns, though, are round the corner and we see all our heroines face a two and a half hours roller coaster of a journey. Carrie and co. come face to face with the dark side of betrayal, peppered with hilarious one liners, great performances and a wardrobe to die for.
Sex and The City: The Movie may feel fairly out of date in today’s world yet reassuringly familiar and comforting. Definitely worth watching back, or watching it if you’ve never see it before; put feminism aside and feel free to bask in love and labels.
Reposted from the archives, to help celebrate #BRWC10.
By Last Caress.
Niagara Falls police detective and Iraq war veteran John Dromoor (Nicolas Cage, The Rock) is flagged down by a 12 year old girl after she witnesses her mother, Teena, being brutally attacked and left for dead by a group of local men.
When the men are caught, their parents hire slick criminal defence attorney Jay Kirkpatrick, (Don Johnson, Django Unchained) who puts the focus on Teena’s credibility, based on her sobriety and promiscuity. Shockingly her assailants are exonerated and released, even though the daughter’s testimony should have alone been enough for a certain conviction.
In the aftermath of the verdict Dromoor grows increasingly close to the victim and her family, who he then discovers are being taunted and stalked by the freed men. The injustice becomes too much for him to take and, fuelled by a sense of vengeance and his own personal demons, Dromoor sets out on a lone campaign to dole out the justice the men deserve.
Vengeance: A Love Story
How provocatively can a woman behave before she’s asking to be sexually assaulted? How far, before any battering she receives becomes her fault, and not that of her attackers? The answer is of course that there is NO distance a woman can go before she deserves to be raped, but these are the questions being put to the good folk of Niagara Falls, NY, in this, the new film by director Johnny Martin (Delirium). Based on the 2003 novella Rape: A Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates, Vengeance: A Love Story plays in many ways like an eighties/nineties TV thriller. This feeling is no doubt augmented by the star turns of both Don Johnson in strutting peacock mode as cocksure defender Jay Kirkpatrick and of a (thankfully) largely restrained Nicolas Cage as John Dromoor, the detective determined to dispense justice when the law will not. The real stars here however are Anna Hutchison (The Cabin in the Woods) as Teena, the victim of the attack, and Talitha Bateman (The 5th Wave) as Bethie, the girl who witnessed the entire assault on her mother. I expected to find myself referring to Miss Bateman as a newcomer but this is her fifteenth picture and, given her ability on display here, I really shouldn’t have been surprised.
Vengeance: A Love Story
In addition to the rape itself which is brutal but mercifully brief, Vengeance: A Love Story is often a hard watch, from the various scenes of young Bethie being harried in her small town by the friends and relatives of the rapists, to the court scenes in which Teena is pulled to pieces all over again in an entirely different but hardly less inhuman manner. Things unfortunately degenerate into more typical Nicolas Cage territory later on but, this being a straight-to-video affair, that was always on the cards.
Vengeance: A Love Story
Vengeance: A Love Story never drags, Nicolas Cage maintains a laconic restraint for the most part, and the movie – due out on March 27th, 2017 – is certainly worth at least a look.
