"Nightmare Alley" Review - From the Facebook Vaults!

 "Nightmare Alley"

Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) is a mysterious drifter who, with nowhere to go and nothing better to do, ends up in the travelling carnival of Clement Hoatley (Willem Dafoe). He learns from the various carnies, including ageing con artist Pete (David Straithairn), his psychic Tarot reader wife Zeena (Toni Collette), strongman Bruno (Ron Perlman) and The Major (Mark Povinelli); but most importantly he bonds with Molly the Electric Girl (Rooney Mara), and decides to strike out on his own as a con artist and grifter. The two of them take their act to the city, encountering more strange people like a mysterious woman (Cate Blanchett) and an even odder man (Richard Jenkins); and as this pair of carnival hucksters lie and cheat and spin their way from the gutter to high society we have to ask:

Is he man, or is he beast?

If you like Del Toro, you'll enjoy this. It's an intoxicating period piece of film noir, all slime and sleaze and oil, but with that veneer of respectability, as we follow a genuinely charming but thoroughly soulless man from the bottom of society, and its nasty underbelly, on this journey. Sound design in excellent, the cast unanimously excellent (Straithern and Collette were my favourites: I'd love a movie about this washed up, burnout drunkard of a conman and his genuinely caring, loving "psychich medium" of a wife) and the settings gorgeous. My favourite shot comes towards the end, as our protagonist (?) runs in an ever more savage and bestial manner...

It's a twisty, bending plot through the eyes of a guy we do not like but are intrinsically drawn to (funny that...) as he learns, watches, observes, and practices... But is he as clever as he thinks he is?

It's great fun, bloody too. But may be a bit too long for some folks' tastes.

"Weathering With You" Review - From the Facebook Vaults!

 "Weathering With You"

Hodaka is a teenager who has run away from home, to make a life for himself as a writer in Tokyo. It's not going well: in between constant rain and not finding a place to live, he has ended up with no job. He gets lucky and meets Mr Suga, who runs a magazine detailing the odd and the supernatural, and Hina, a young girl who may or may not have the ability to control the weather...

This was nice. Unlike something like, say "Josee, The Tiger and the Fish", I liked our principle characters, and the side characters are good fun too (a nice one is that Hina's brother is an absolute ladykiller despite being, like, 11); the central relationship is well-sketched out and there are beautiful shots using the weather. It falls for the usual tricks and stumbles of "prestige anime" films like this one: the big grandiose music with blunt-force trauma translation at the key emotional beats, the awkward mumbling of its lead characters, and a rather horrifying plot sort of glossed over. But it's well put together, it's gorgeously animated, well-dubbed (Riz Ahmed is in this! They could have sprung for anybody and they sprung for Riz Ahmed to play one of the cops, I love that) and despite its ending dragging out a little bit (this film could have been an hour and forty) it generally earns its emotional moments and the plot is actually quite nicely observed.

I like it. I'm sorry I was late to this one.

"Belfast" Review - From the Facebook Vaults!

 "Belfast"

In 1969 (nice) young Buddy (Jude Hill) grows up in strange and trying times. His parents are arguing, he pines for the smart girl at school, and the street he lives on is set to be the battleground for the most turbulent strife in modern Irish history...

This movie was excellent. Shot in black and white (save for the brief spots of colour, when Buddy goes to the theatre and cinema, and one of these cleverly and excellently reflected in Judi Dench's glasses), it is evocative and sweet without feeling too Boomer. It's a lot funnier than I was expecting, which works in its favour: we have this, at its core, sweet and relatable story about an ordinary, poor kid's childhood - interrupted every so often by the horrors of what this "trouble" brought. Seeing it through his eyes is an effective, distant way of doing it: everything is slightly off frame, and the sweet tone never feels at odds with the darker subject matter. There is even a very amusing sequence at a supermarket, tinged with abject absurdity and terror, and a nice little nod and throughline of "High Noon" complete with literal brick joke.

Performances are uniformly good: Ciaran Hinds steals the show as Grandpa, it's nice to see Colin Morgan acting in something which isn't fucking "Merlin" and allowing him to stretch his chops, and Jamie Dornan shows that he actually can act. Catriona Balfe is great. But the real find is Jude Hill, he's going places.

My favourite part was a well-earned "Everlasting Love" sequence. Well done to all.

Even you, Van Morrison. Even you.

Fuck.

"Sing a Bit of Harmony" Review - From the Hellscape Vaults!

 "Sing a Bit of Harmony"

In the not too distant future, Satomi is a schoolgirl living in a high tech house. Her mother Mitsuko works for a lab who have made an AI robot, called Shion, and decide to test her out at Satomi's school. If Shion can pass as a human there, it'll be a success! And so this all singing, all dancing robot is thrust into the lives of Satomi and a ragtag bunch of her friends...

This was a rather pleasant surprise. It starts off strong, gets a bit wonky, but has a rich emotional payoff towards the third act, with a genuinely clever little twist regarding Shion. Yes, it is embracing the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" trope we've all grown rather tired of, but there's a freshness here, a unique spin to it all, thanks to rather sweet supporting characters, some musical numbers (the lyrics have had a rather blunt-force translation, but Megan Shipman has a beautiful voice which carries it) and I got a bit emotional at the end. It's a rather endearing piece, despite its bland and unnecessary villain, with some gorgeous visuals and a tight little story.

"Belle" Review - From the Facebook Vaults!

"Belle"

"Belle"

Suzu (Kaho Nakamura) is a shy, freckled schoolgirl in rural Japan, with a desire to sing, inherited from her mother who died young... She is distant with her father (Koji Yakusho of all fucking people! Hell yes!), but has friends in the form of eccentric computer expert/nerd Hiro (Lilas Ikuta), cool kid Shinobu (Ryo Narita) who vowed to protect her when they were six, and popular queen bee Rika (Tina Tamashiro); though she struggles to communicate properly. When Hiro hooks her up into the ultimate virtual reality world of "U", where your avatar is matched to your inner self, she becomes "Belle", an overnight success and singing superstar. But the fame encroaches on her school life, bringing new anxieties she never asked for, and her path crosses with another user ; The mysterious "Dragon", who is wanted in the "U" by various factions, in a tale as old as time...

Alright, so if you're familiar with Mamoru Hasoda ("The Girl Who Leapt Through Time", "Mirai", "Summer Wars", "Wolf Children" and "The Boy and the Beast") then you should roughly know what to expect: critical acclaim, a relatively strong emotional core but perhaps too much ambition for its own good. This is certainly one of those, definitely closer to "Summer Wars" in more ways than one: beyond its use of the internet as a plot point, it has a sweet central story at its core which is overshadowed by its scope and reaching just a tad too far for the stars, but gorgeously animated and just about sticking the landing. The animation is spectacular and the first 15 or so minutes are riveting: a triumphant introduction followed by a legitimately harrowing flashback. The film takes an optimistic view of mankind, technology and the internet, and uses its imagery well. There is a fantastic water motif used nice and sparingly, and the animation is spectacular throughout. The film, however, speeds through its "Beauty and the Beast" angle a tad too quickly for my tastes, and it is at its best when focusing on the real world and the smaller details: My favourite shot is of two star-crossed lovers trying to confess their feelings to each other, whilst behind them a bus and a train leave in different, but parallel, directions. I love it, it's nice.

The darker elements are not too jarring, personally, and there's a lot to dissect and discuss with its imagery, plot, characters and themes. I feel that it could have just stripped a few things back, focused on one or two things more.

Music is, naturally, brilliant.

But it is still excellent, and a great addition to cinema.

"Parallel Mothers" Review - From the Facebook Vaults!

 "Parallel Mothers"

Janis (Penelope Cruz) is a photographer in Milan, who is hoping to enlist the aid of the sexy, Spanish-version of

Hiroshi Abe, Arturo (Israel Elejalde) in digging up the mass grave her great-grandfather was buried in in her home village, so that her village may find peace. Meanwhile, she has become pregnant by the sexy Arturo...

In the hospital she meets teenage single mother-to-be Ana (Milena Smit), and they decide to keep in touch...

This is getting super-acclaim, and I sort of get it even if it's not my bag. Penelope Cruz is excellent, showing off a great range here, and the bright camp of the film works for the first hour or so, with lots of bright colours and 60s/70s kitschy decor; and soapy-esque twists and turns.

It attempts to go into darker territory, however, with its attempts to tackle the legacy of the past and war, and it seems like a whiplash.

Not my jam, but somebody will dig this to fuck.

"Jackass Forever" Review - From the Facebook Vaults!

 Review: Jackass Forever

Batman and Robin: Colourised

"Jackass Forever"

We open on a city, imperilled by doom, an homage to the "Godzilla" movies, and other classic Kaiju fare. Our cast are headlined by the character of Johnny Knoxville (Phillip John Clapp) as a General, mortified by the approaching slaughter. Already there is a skewering of US militarisation and imperialism, of their incompetent, grasping, brutal desires for violent imperial gain being nothing but a twisted, expanded version of the puerile games we are about to bear witness to. Steve-O (Stephen Gilchrist Glover), Dave Englund, Chris Pontius, "Danger" Ehren McGehey, "Wee Man" (Jason Shannon Acuna), Rachel Wolfson, Preston Lacy and more join our band. Already they blur the lines between fiction and reality: personas and players in a great drama about to unfold. Who is the character? Who is the part?

Our beast is revealed: a Godzilla-esque creature indeed but, in a subversion of our expectations (a continued theme in this, the destruction of the boundaries of reality and what we know to be real) it is instead the penis of Chris Pontius, in a model city. Our perspective is shifted between the two: the world of the city and its people, who are scattered in this anarchic carnage, victims of the flow... Or are they willing participants? People who long for this world, where they have some semblance of control, where they can combat the anhedonia of today's world with something cathartic, unpleasant, juvenile, but altogether real?

Then our protagonist, nay ringmaster, turns to the camera and says "My name's Johnny Knoxville! And welcome to Jackass!"

And it all makes sense.

We see the giggles, the laughter of the crew making this penis puppet creature. They embrace the excesses, the tasteless pushing of boundaries. It's all a controlled game.

It's all an antidote to our nightmarish free-wheeling failed state of capitalism.

And we're on board for the ride...

We see our heroes do battle with boredom, bond over misery, catharsis and conquering their own fears of snakes, spiders, vultures eating meat off of a staked midget's penis, and even enacting Icarus' fall from the skies via the use of makeshift wings, Mr Knoxville and an enormous cannon - a true reminder (if any were needed) that they are aware of the joke, that there is no hubris, that there is no goal, that theirs is a mission of meaning, of destroying the barriers which confine and contain us.

Appearances by Spike Jonez, Eric Andre and Tyler, the Creator cement its place as a a post-modern, counter culture subversion of cinematic expectations and the realms of celebrity.

In a world dominated by branding and celebrity, they parody it. They have "Jackass" logos branded upon them, and they prove that in a world obsessed with stardom, who better than these lovable, simple idiots who want only to burn things? What better ambassadors of post-modern lucidity?

Rachel Wolfson licks a taser.

Steve-O takes a skateboard guillotine to the shins.

In all due seriousness: this was fucking great. A chaotic, nihilistic and disgraceful celebration of friendship and the stupid things in life.

It's every "Jackass" movie ever, and all the better for it. You'll know if you want to watch it from the title. It's surprisingly endearing, watching Johnny Knoxville slap men in the penis with a flip flop in a quiz game, or Rachel Wolfson DJ a game of "Exploding Musical Chairs", as it's just pure cathartic fun.

Personal highlight was "Silence of the Lambs", I was actually crying with laughter.