Category: REVIEWS

Here is where you would find our film reviews on BRWC. We look at on trailers, shorts, indies and mainstream. We love movies!

The BRWC Review: A Quiet Place

I’ve been interested in seeing A Quiet Place since I first heard of it. I like the idea of the concept, the simplicity of it. Starring Emily Blunt, who has been great in many good things lately is a definite bonus. Set not too long into the future, our planet has been invaded by a species of feral aliens who hunt and kill anything living – but only if it makes a sound. As soon as human beings learn this, having found no way of killing the aliens, they take to living life without making a single sound. The film follows a family on a farm, all grieving after loosing a child to the creatures. With grief tearing at them and a new baby on the way, their days are numbered…

I feel like I’ve entered bit of a mirror universe here. In the same week we saw the release of a horror film from reliably good Blumhouse and another from the reliably bad Platinum Dunes studios. Yet Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare was hot garbage, not even worth viewing ironically. Whereas Platinum Dunes gave us A Quiet Place, a well-made and effective horror film. It’s clear that this is a passion project for writer, director, actor and real-life husband to Emily Blunt John Krasinski.

There’s effort put into every frame here. If I had to compare this to anything else, I’d compare it to an M. Night Shyamalan film. Here me out – we can say what we will about Shyamalan’s body of work, but there’s no denying that for the most part his films are very well-made in terms of directing, camera and sound. Well, maybe not The Last Airbender and After Earth. It’s the same here. Painstaking detail has been given to how this film looks and sounds. I loved the idea that the usually noisy son has a lot of ambient noise surrounding him, whereas when the cameras on the deaf daughter everything is muffled. I like how the camera works around the creatures – we don’t really see them until a point. This is done by hiding them, but not with editing or dodgy lighting. It’s done by clever framework. There’s either an obstacle in the way or they move too quickly for us to focus on them. It makes the hiding of them feel less cheap.

It’s also a very well-acted film, made more impressive by the lack of dialogue throughout most of it. It makes you realise how much we need sound in our daily lives. When they want to shout they can’t, they can only sign it. When they are in pain they can’t scream, they have to hold it in. I like the little details here too. They can all use sign-language – because the daughter is deaf, so they would know how to do that anyway. The mother is implied to have been a nurse and the father an electrician, giving reason for their skills. They use sand to muffle their footsteps and lights to send out messages.

But this is sadly where the film flounders. When we are shown all these details it makes us point out more that they either missed or got wrong. Questions like where they got so much sand are easily ignored, but less so is how they have electricity. The only way I can think of is by generator, but we all know how much sound those make. We’re also not given a gage for what the creatures can hear, which does make the film feel a little inconsistent. We are told that they can’t hear you if you are surrounded by noise, such as by a waterfall. We are also shown the kids playing monopoly with cotton pieces so as not to make clattering sounds on the board, implying that the creatures will hear that. But then we have people getting spotted when fireworks or car engines are going and creatures not hearing a woman breathing heavily from labour pains.

On that note, I don’t really understand why they are having a baby. I can understand it if they played up the element that it was to replace the one they lost, but they don’t really. We all see the problem here – the birthing will be bad enough. But even after that babies can be the noisiest things. In a world like the one they set up it sounds like far too much a risk for them to take. A Quiet Place just suffers from trying to be a little too big for its boots. It wants to act smart, being an effective horror film in the process. It reminds me of The Descent that way. But while it does manage to achieve the latter goal it forgets something – something that The Descent didn’t, and what made it the far greater film. It’s that at the end of the day it’s just a monster film. Adding too many details to a film that ends up being a chase movie with a creature is not the smartest way to go about it. It’s all enjoyable, but the little niggles do start to stack after a while.

I liked A Quiet Place. I have issues with it, and I don’t think it’s worthy of a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. But I did still find it to be a suspenseful and enjoyable horror film. They work well with a restrictive concept and it feels as long as it needed to feel. The craftsmanship is great and I love how it felt throughout it. If you can look past some logical errors and not ask why people stand still when they make a noise, then you’ll have a very fun time with it. See it and see if you’d survive in this situation. I know I wouldn’t!

30th April 2018
Avengers: Infinity War – BRWC Spoiler Filled Review

By Finley Crebolder.

Cast your minds back to last July’s Spiderman: Homecoming, and more specifically, it’s post-credits scene, where Captain America speaks directly to the audience about patience, saying “Sometimes it leads to very little, and seems like its not worth it… and you wonder why you waited so long for something so disappointing…”. Heading into Infinity War, a film that fans have awaited 10 years for, it was hard not to think back to these words and worry. The challenge faced by the Russo Brothers was monumental, could they really live up to the sky-high hopes of the fans, balancing an abundance of characters in the process? To put things simply, yes, yes they could.

And a word of warning, spoilers ahead. Lots and lots of them.

In the build up to this film the Russo Brothers constantly spoke of how this was Thanos’s film, and they weren’t exaggerating. It could even be said that “Thanos; Infinity War” would have been a more appropriate title. The MCU have always had a problem with villains, and right from the off it was made abundantly clear that this was about to change.

How? Well, having him slam about a character we’re used to seeing doing the slamming was harrowing, so harrowing in fact that poor old Hulk was too scarred to come out for the rest of the film. If that wasn’t enough to establish the threat of the Mad Titan, the ease and brutality in which he murdered Loki with Thor watching on helplessly certainly did it.

This set high standards for the Titan to maintain for the rest of the film, but if anything, he just got better and better. The more we learnt about his tragic past, the more we understood his motives, and whilst he is undoubtedly a villain rather than an anti-hero, by the end of the film it was difficult not to emphasise with him. The emotional depth and layers of the character were done so well in fact, that even after he wiped out half of our beloved heroes, I still found myself not entirely hating him. Thanos is not only the best villain the MCU has seen, but one of the best characters.

So, the villain was great, but what about the heroes? Well, it was always going to be difficult to give every single one of them the arc they deserved in this film, meaning that many don’t get the development we would have hoped for, with the most major ones being Captain America, Spider-Man and Black Panther. However, the former is likely to get the spotlight (for the last time) in the next film, whilst the latter two have years ahead of him in this universe.

On a more positive note, Robert Downey Jr was typically brilliant as Tony Stark/Iron Man, being hilarious and heart-breaking in equal measure, whilst a character he spent the entire film with, Doctor Strange, showed that he’s more than capable of taking the mantle of the MCU’s leader heading forward.

The highlight, however, was undoubtedly Thor. The character was always seen as one of the more disappointing Avengers up until November when Taika Waititi gave the character a much-needed revival, and the new and improved Thor was carried over into this film. His interactions with Star Lord when first meeting the Guardians were entertaining, but it was his and Rocket’s relationship that stole the show.

It was much more than just comedy that made Thor the best character of the film though, Thanos aside. After the first ten minutes of the film, he was now in a place where he had lost his mother, father, brother, friends, planet and species, and through Hemsworth’s performance we truly felt the pain he was carrying with him, with his “What more could I lose?” monologue being one of the most emotional moments of the film.

It was also nice to see his awesome godly power shown appropriately at last; his arrival on Wakanda is arguably the greatest moment in the MCU, let alone the film. With Hemsworth’s contract up after Avengers 4 and Thor already having had his standalone trilogy, it looks likely that he’s to bow out next year, but this would be a huge shame following the characters development in his past two films.

Balance was a key theme throughout the film, and it was also exactly why the film worked so well. There was a constant sense of hopelessness throughout, with it at no point feeling like the heroes had the upper hand, but rather that they were simply delaying the inevitable. It would have been easy for this to take the fun out of the film and make it too dark, but this was avoided with well-placed comedy, namely coming from Thor and the Guardians, that didn’t hurt the movies high stakes and often dire situations. Too little comedy and the film could’ve gone the way of a DC movie; too much and it could’ve become too Joss Whedon-y, but the movie, much like the universe, ended up perfectly balanced.

Whilst there were hilarious moments, the more serious, dramatic ones were where the movie thrived. Throughout, characters are constantly forced to decide the fate of their loved ones, whether it be Loki with Thor, Scarlet Witch with Vision, Star Lord with Gamora or Thanos with Gamora. Due to how well these relationships have been developed in both prior films and this one, we felt the emotional struggle of the characters in these moments, with Scarlett Witch’s and Thanos’s decisions to ultimately kill their loved ones being extremely powerful.

These said relationships also made the ending much more effective. Seeing both Cap and Rocket see their best friends die in front of their eyes packed a serious punch, whilst the sheer fear in Peter Parker’s voice as he was wiped away made us feel as broken as his mentor and father figure, “Mr Stark”. The impact of the deaths at the end was however somewhat lessened by the fact that they are all almost certainly going to come back to life, given that almost all of the victims are key players going into Phase Four.

Nevertheless, it was generally a bold and brilliant ending, leaving the good guys in a situation worse than anything they’ve ever faced, whilst, with Doctor Strange’s “It was the only way” line and the arrival of Captain Marvel hinted at in the post-credits scene, leaving us with just about enough hope to carry us through the year.

Looking forward, it’s likely that the next film will be a send off for our original Avengers as they somehow sacrifice themselves to make way for the next generation of MCU heroes (what was that about no trading lives Cap?), and, if it’s anywhere near as exciting, emotional and exhilarating as Infinity War, what a send off it will be.

27th April 2018
Review: The Misandrists

Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce’s film, The Misandrists is a tongue-in-cheek ode to the feminist movement and queer cinema. Set ‘somewhere in Ger(wo)many’, the film centres on a group of girls known as the Female Liberation Army. They have been recruited by a woman who goes by the name of Big Mother, and are being trained to overthrow patriarchy and abolish men all together.

The story begins when two girls, Isolde and Hilda, stumble upon an injured soldier whilst frolicking in the German countryside, and decide to disobey the strict no-men-beyond-this-point rule set in stone by Big Mother. They hide him in the basement and promise to nurse him back to health. When Hilde grows tired of being rejected by Isolde, she breaks the code of silence and reveals their secret to another girl. We later learn that there are a lot more truths to be discovered under this roof, some of which challenge the very essence of what people define as ‘female’.

The acting in this film is purposefully below par, an essential aspect of LaBruce’s cinema, which adds a comic, trashy element of charm to the movie. The girls are striking and amazing to look at, adorned with piercings and eccentric makeup teamed with stereotypically ‘sexy’ schoolgirl outfits. LaBruce’s portrayal of second-wave feminism is witty and unique, and we watch as the girls sit in their HERstory class (instead of History), and as Big Mother lectures the girls on her (wo)manifesto, inspiring laughs with lines like “who could that be at this ungoddessly hour?”.

The FLA use lesbian porn as a form of female propaganda, and these scenes are shot in red lights evoking the style of the 70’s and ‘80s European music video/pornography scene. The storyline, in the end, is anticlimactic and less than inspiring, but the cinematography and the aesthetics are worth admiring. As a narrative, though, don’t go in expecting too much. However, if you’re looking for a clever and fun look at radical feminism, this is definitely worth a watch!

24th April 2018
Perfect: Review

Jeremie Battaglia’s debut documentary, Perfect, follows the Canadian synchronised swimming team over the course of a year leading up to the 2016 Rio Olympics Qualifiers. Framing the beauty alongside the struggle, Battaglia portrays a hard life for the women of the team, as they strive for the perfection the sport demands.

A sport it most certainly is. It is clear from the off that synchronised swimming deserves to be seen at an Olympic level, a large proportion of the swimmers having had a background in gymnastics. Training is tougher than you might expect, the women pushing themselves to the limit despite frequent injuries. “A lot of the that work we do is from other sports,” one of the athletes summarises, “We run, we do gym work, ballet etcetera etcetera. But we do that as our warm up, to do our own sport.”.

Working as cinematographer as well as director, Battaglia captures the exquisite nature of each performance in wonderful slow motion. The unseen movements beneath the surface of the water are a particular highlight, delivered with a sense of awe that is hard not to share. Vincent Letellier’s score wouldn’t be out of place in a thriller, complimenting the tension arising in the training and held throughout the film. For this team, the sport, and winning, is everything.

Sadly, Battaglia’s film is a little too brief to give anything other than an introduction to the sport. Perfect mentions important issues the women face – issues that deserve further investigation – before brushing past them without too much thought. Body image problems and eating disorders are not given nearly enough time, but the worst is perhaps the institutionalised judge bias. Seemingly, teams are punished for showcasing diversity, forcing Canadians to tan to match the shade of their team member darkest in skin tone. Already at a disadvantage to Asian teams who groom their athletes from an early age, the women must work even harder for what is perhaps an unachievable goal. The piece offers no solution to this problem, though, and nor does it offer any hope of things changing for the better in the future.

Still, if all you are looking for is an introduction to a sport you don’t really know anything about, the piece will certainly suffice. Battaglia succeeds in portraying the Canadian team as classic underdogs, vying for glory against the robotic Chinese and Russian teams, and the creative Spanish and Italian athletes. Who doesn’t love an underdog? Taking his cue from Cool Runnings, Major League and a hundred other sports films, Battaglia skilfully manipulates us to wince at every sprain, and cheer for every dive, flip and coordinated handstand.

24th April 2018
EEFF 2018: Brasilia Life After Design

The one thing you never think about when living in a sprawling metropolis is how did it come to be. Looking at the buildings in London the way they are cheek by jowl, it doesn’t look as if a lot of planning went into it. Brasilia: Life After Design will change that point of view. There’s a lot of planning especially when creating a new (ahem) planned city, buildings aren’t the only consideration. The physical buildings have to be sturdy enough to accommodate not only people but the hopes of a nation, this idea is at the beating heart of Brasilia: Life After Design. This documentary will show you that design plays a significant impact on society and whether it succeeds or fails.

Bart Simpson’s documentary takes a critical look at the reasons why Brasilia was created, the process of creating a city in the 1950s and also the hopes, some of them naive especially the idea that class wouldn’t matter. The film uses archive footage of the designer – not only of why the city was planned out in the way it was but his experiences whilst it was being built. However, the success of this documentary is to focus on four individuals living in the city now and their experiences. What is clear although never expressly stated is that there are always winners and losers and the sad irony is the losers in Brasilia are the very ones that architects Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemayer had set out to help.

Brasilia: Life After Design is a fascinating documentary. The slow decline from idealism to realism and how people actually live in Brasilia today is is both fascinating and unsurprising. You don’t need to be a design aficionado to watch this documentary, it is made for everyone and anyone who is fascinated by the impact design has on your life.

Brasilia: Life After design will have its London Premiere at Rich Mix 26 April 6pm + panel discussion with Director & Hattie Hartman (The Architects’ Journal) as part of the East End Film Festival.

The East End Film Festival 2018 runs from 11 – 29 April 2018.

19th April 2018