"Dangerous Animals" - Review

Across the sunny shores of Australia, drifting vagabond/tourist Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) is here to enjoy the waves and the surfs, without a care in the world nor a need for human company. But during her travels, she crosses paths with tour director Tucker (Jai Courtney), and finds out just how dangerous wildlife in Australia truly is...

From the director of "The Loved Ones", Sean Byrne, (a good movie, twisted and sadistic yet a darkly humorous spin on the "teen prom" movie, elightfully old school sleaze. I love it) has followed it up with something in the same vein, but with a twist! I never saw "The Devil's Candy", and I really should - Ethan Embry is great.
Much akin to the very enjoyable "Heretic", a lot of the hype has been marketed around the performance of the villain - here Jai Courtney, finally getting to act rather than being funnelled into thankless Hollywood roles (remember his turns as John McClane's son, Kyle Reese and the villain of "Honest Thief"? Scratch that, remember "Honest Thief"?) and relishing it (though I do like him as Captain Boomerang, one of the few upsides of "Suicide Squid"); rightfully so in this case. Tucker is portrayed with the perfect balance of menace and entertainment value: singing "Baby Shark" and joking around with his victims from one moment, then prone to savagery and horrific violence the next - comparisons (as lazy as they may be) will inevitably be made to Mick Taylor from "Wolf Creek", which are not entirely unfounded, but I find Tucker a fun and relentlessly effective villain here. Good on you, Jai Courtney!
For he is the villain here.
It is a "shark attack" movie, but the sharks are portrayed and shot in honestly a refreshingly ehtereal, awe-inspired light: they feed because there is blood and they find the prey to resemble that which they eat. The frequent wide angle lenses ("fish eyes" if you will, har-har...) show us just how vast the ocean is (fuck the ocean, terifying place) and let them swim with grace, dignity and silky smooth reverance. They are scary creatures, but nothing is more terrifying than mankind: Tucker is a predator with nothing but darkness behind the eyes, comparing himself to sharks but with none of their beauty. I LOVED the scenes where he cruises by in his truck (already shot like a shark in the ocean) and is enraptured by passing young women, who are shot in slow motion as if they are beautiful creatures beneath the waves, prey for him to devour...
His foil is Hassie Harrison's Zephyr, who's bloody excellent in this. Her introduction is my favourite character introduction in recent memory: buying a slushie from a shop, only to tip it outside and reveal the tub of ice cream she had stashed within to keep cool on her way back to her van, showing her guile and cunning and that she's broke and in an unknwon land. She begins as guarded and defensive, a lone wolf (a lone shark if you will...) and gets put through the bloody wringer in this: kudos to Harrison, for this is the first thing I've seen her in and she absolutely nails this. If you do a good horror movie role, you're pretty much set for life in my books (Maika Monroe, Kaya Scodelario, Jocelin Donahue, etc) so I'm very keen to see where Harrison goes here.
The movie is sadistic and incredibly engaging: the narrow escapes and tantalisingly close exits are agonising, in the best kind of way for this genre of movie, and it's fantastic edge-of-your-seat stuff from a guy who knows what he's doing, utterly sold with conviction by committed performers in Harrison and Courtney. It never feels exploitative (there are wonderful touches of humanity like names on a wall, videotapes, and an honestly kind of chilling banality in the evil of showing Tucker do his nighttime routine) or sleazy and leering, and is just a rock solid cat-and-mouse game, of a man with a woman on his hook, who may be more wiley than he thought...
It gets a thumbs up from me!
Haaaaaaaaaaaaa

"Suicide Squad" Review - From the Vaults

 So, "Suicide Squad..."

If this were made in the 90s (which it feasibly could have been, keeping the Will Smith character, replacing Leto with Matthew Lillard, replacing Robbie with Alyssa Milano, casting Freddie Prinze Junior as El Diablo etc) with the same plot line, style and soundtrack (give or take a few of the more modern songs), this would have been ahead of its time and pretty good.

As it stands, it's messy and clunky, with big pacing issues particularly at the start, but still fairly fun and watchable, carried by the charm of its cast and the few moments when the film is allowed to breathe. The villain is absolutely awful: They have two conflicting plans (I think) and about as many minutes of proper screen time, and I am struggling to remember a single thing about them, their motivations or their lines.

The fight scenes are fun, if also cluttered, and there are a few bright moments and colourful things going on to keep it afloat. There's a sort of funky, neon coloured graphic for each squad member with a quirky fact about them, the colour scheme is something other than black or very dark grey, and a few lines here and there do make me chuckle. Plus there is a simple joy in this sort of set up (Fiery Mexican gangster, Will Smith, annoying pop cultural void, Adewale Akkinouye Agbaje, the dude from the Robocop remake, a shitbag armed with boomerangs and a 90s anime depiction of Japan go forth on an adventure from which few of them shall return) 

Will Smith can carry this sort of part in his sleep, and Robbie makes what has ALWAYS been an irritating character into something watchable and not too grating. For every one of her gags that misfire, she has one which hits. Her arc isn't too horrific either.

Smith lands a good line every time he's required to make a joke, he's still as charming as he always is, and it's a wise move to make him the lead character. 

Joel Kinnaman, looking very much like an addled heroin addict taking on the form of a badger in a military fetish outfit, takes on the part of straight man, and has a somewhat interesting arc and pulls off his part admirably. 

Adewale Akkinouye Agbaje is ALWAYS a terrifying force of ungodly nature on screen, and it is only by his good graces that the part of Killer Croc succeeds. They're trying to go for a Drax the Destroyer vibe, but with a playful undercurrent, but most of his lines backfire, and it would have been nicer to have the man remain silent, or say some actual Adewale Akkinouye Agbaje lines. He still got the odd chuckle out of me.

I know literally three things about Cara Delavigne: she's frequently in the celebrity section of the i, she has a stupid name (both in this movie and in real life), and she is in this film. That is how much of an impact she makes.

Viola Davis actually is another who brings something to the table. Her character is unnerving and a bit of a knob, to be honest, and it's an excellent example of the true "grey area" that this film was trying to convey. I really wanted more of her.

But the star of the show, for me at least, was also indicative of the problems of the film. 

Captain Boomerang is played by Jai Courtney, and he is actually the one character (aside from Deadshot) who I'd be interested in following a movie about. All of his jokes hit, he's fun, his part is zesty, he brings humour and joy to the screen, he's an unrelenting shit-bag who brings some sort of drama to the dynamic, he carries a pink fluffy unicorn for some reason (in a quirky touch that actually seemed to fit the tone of the movie and its director) and I watched the movie legitimately hoping that he would not die (fully aware that Will smith and Margot Robbie's characters were as safe as Fort Knox) . Heck, in the final battle, he throws an ordinary boomerang at the main villain and I legitimately hoped that it would actually kill them, as that would have been pretty funny.

But he's a problem here, because he's underused and interesting. Much like Karen Fukuhara's "Katana", who arrives seemingly from another movie (and is the WORST bodyguard since Kevin Costner) only to be sidelined for everything save the fight scenes, despite being WAY more interesting than many, and her backstory about a soul-stealing sword containing her dead husband and a one-woman war on all organised crime being dropped in a single sentence. That's not something that you can just throw in there like a boomerang, that's a pretty interesting thing.

Same for Jim Parrack (yes, Jim Parrack's in this) as the henchman of the Joker, alongside a dude dressed as a panda. What's their story? I'd kind of like to know how they got to this point in their lives.

The plot has a simple set up, a definite end goal, and yet a muddled way of going about it. The gang seem to find out the power of friendship rather quickly and the introductions of the characters come thick and fast. 

But the soundtrack is good. It's not "Neon Demon" good, but is has a few gems in there even if it does have WAY too many music cues, as if trying to out-gun James Gunn. It does play "Fortunate Son", which made me happy, and there is some AC/DC in there.

It's a fun B-movie which is good for a couple of hours of entertainment. Take your brain out and watch one sitcom character (seriously, it's nice to find a movie that Jai Courtney feels at home in after all these attempts to make him a leading man)  and his buddies of varying interest go on a quest. Yes, it's a cynical attempt (more than most) to make Halloween costumes and play to success, but it's still fun.

I'll forget about it when I try to list the movies I saw this year, but it's not awful. This is certainly not (as one cro-magnon put it) worse than Fant4stic.