No.344 : West of Hell (2018)

West of Hell at the IMDb

 

All aboard Rick & Morty’s Story Train for this trip to Disappointment with stops at Nonsensical Parkway, Confusion Central and bypassing Narrative Structure and Illumination Broadway.

We set off on a midnight train to Atlanta. At first it seems like a regular train with a bunch of murderous and mysterious characters, but there is more afoot that initially meets the eye. The train carriages themselves are set up like well appointed drawing rooms so that’s probably your first clue that things are not what they seem - there are no discarded copies of ‘Metro’ lying around and Baz hasn’t tagged the entire carriage.

We meet Jericho, who in another life was ‘Candyman’. He’s an ex-slave on a mission to kill all former slave owners and their first born children. One such child who is on-board is Annie, who has engaged the bodyguard services of ex-civil war soldier Roland. Candyman and Ro-land come to blows early on, but retreat to different carriages when things don’t go to plan - bullets don’t seem to be working for some reason.

We meet some other passengers, such as one chap who has a penchant for strangling prostitutes and another lady who has her ex-slave employed as her maid. They all have a past to hide but secrets are slowly revealed when they are joined by a shape shifter. As you have probably guessed things moved away from a conventional western when this chap appears, and employs ropey special effects to become each of our character’s dark secret.

After their pasts are laid bare the gang decide that the train they are on is on its way to Hell. Is there anything they can do to save their souls? Well, Lance Henriksen is in the last carriage and given he’s the Devil there may be some deals to be done…

This wasn’t a terrible film but it doesn’t have much to recommend it either. The production values were pretty low despite a couple of familiar faces such as the ‘jump to conclusions’ guy out of ‘Office Space’ making a brief appearance complete with unconvincing diabolical laughter. The lighting was poor in places with it hard to make out the action, and one character, who has a bag over his head, is virtually unintelligible. 

From the start I thought the twist was that they were on the road (tracks) to Hell and this proved correct - to be fair they didn’t really dress it up as anything else, so it wasn’t even a surprise never mind a twist. Lance was a pretty laid back Devil and offered little in the way of menace. As is standard, he offered the characters deals to get out of their predicament - terrible, lop sided deals! We did get a chance to see some of our characters in flashback and were able to decide for ourselves who was worthy of the visit to the flames and who was a victim of circumstance. Some were evil and went down that path whilst others made noble sacrifices having come to terms with their crimes. There were no real surprises in anyone’s arc with redemption liberally sprinkled about whilst the real baddies got their just desserts.

There were a couple of decent ideas in play, but the film was limited by its scope and budget. The Devil must have better things to do with his time as did Lance who clearly only spared half a day for the production.

The film only lasts about 80 minutes and the story would have been better used as an episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’ or the like rather than a half baked full feature.

You will see a lot worse and there was enough to garner half marks although that hooded guy, whose dialogue I couldn’t make out a word of,  cost them a chunk on his own. Overall it’s not a train to catch but if you find yourself on-board, you may as well stay on for the predictable and undemanding conclusion.

Best Bit : What’s this noose doing here?  'W' Rating 12/23

No.343 : What We Wanted (2020)

 

What We Wanted at the IMDb

Time for another session of Alan Partridge’s ‘Problem People’ as we spend 90 minutes in the company of Austrian couple Alice and Niklas. As we meet them they are receiving bad news from their fertility clinic. Their fourth and final state sponsored session of treatment has failed and they have to face the prospect of remaining childless.

Their therapist suggests a trip away to recharge their batteries and so they set off for Sardinia, despite being in the midst of a large building project at their home. Their prickly chat over directions suggest all is not well and their fully loaded credit cards imply they have money issues also.

They arrive at the Italian resort, but their quiet time is quickly interrupted by an Irish family and their screaming daughter and emo son. They try to move apartments but politeness means they stay and slowly get to know their neighbours - and experience the highs and lows of having children.

The young daughter speaks stark truths through her innocence and the son’s issues make our couple wonder if kids are worth the trouble. The Irish man isn’t shy about flaunting his wealth and his younger wife spouts a lot of horoscope nonsense which hits surprisingly close to home.

All the while our couples’ relationship is crumbling and home truths and long buried resentments are aired in private and soon in public. Will a potential tragedy show them the error of their ways or are they conditioned to accept their miserable and emotion free existence?

This film wasn’t as grim as my summary suggests, but it’s certainly one to watch with your partner unless you want to be examined over every remark and action in your last 20 years. The lead couple are good independently of each other but I didn’t think they were a great match. They were like an Austrian (actually German) Tilda Swinton and Mark Ruffalo and they didn’t seem to have much of a spark. I guess that was the point given their floundering relationship, with the partnership seeming somewhat uneven.

Small snippets of their past are peppered throughout and although the big revelation wasn’t a total surprise, at least it had been earned given what had gone before. The little girl, Denise, was a real cutie and she was a good device for getting to the heart of things that the adults would skip around. The sub plot with the overbearing Dad and emo son was less well developed and the impact of the big finale was a bit underwhelming.

It was nice to spend 90 minutes in sunny Italy in the company of some good looking people - it was just a pity they were all a bit needy and didn’t leave their troubles at home. There was a lot of metaphor and symbolism flying around and I’m sure a lot of big points were being made, but for the most part it did look a lot like privileged people having a hard time of their own making.

Best Bit : Pool Night  ‘W’ Rating : 15/23

No.342 : Wicked Spring (2002)

 Wicked Spring at the IMDb

The American Civil War lasted for about four years - this film felt slightly longer.

We open in 1861 with a long and meandering introduction to our characters. It is the golden time before the war, and we are treated to bucolic scenes of the harvest and people courting. We know it can’t last and are eventually transported to a battle in 1863 where the Blues and the Greys are facing off, in a small scale battle, in some woods.

The battle scene is the highlight of the film but it does highlight the small budget that is in play, with the 20 odd soldiers, who comprise each army, struggling to make the scene look epic. It looks daft that they are all crammed together to try and show scale as it’s clear that they would have fought better by spreading out a bit.

The battle isn’t well choreographed with at times it being unclear who is shooting who. This may be deliberate to show the horrors of war, but for me it just looked a bit unfocused and messy. There were several kills with the actors being shown to be hit many times from different angles in slow motion. This was a strange choice by the director as it took you out of the moment and made the thing look like a rap video.

With one side routed the soldiers flee into the woods and are detached from their units. Our main hero, Harrison, is with another soldier and they meet up with four others and set up a camp. Over an never-ending night the men share stories and food and we learn that Harrison hasn’t read any of the letters he received from his sweetheart, as he doesn’t read too good and that.

His new friend reads all his letters for him and sadly there’s no juicy stuff. There is however plenty of violin music accompanying the endless letter reading so we have that at least. I was expecting a bit more during this section to be honest, but maybe I just missed what was happening in the dark. “I can’t see a damn thing!“ someone exclaims at one point - I hear you brother, but obviously I can’t see you.

The next morning Harrison is awoken by a kick to the ribs. The nasty one with the medical background has discovered that the soldiers are from different sides and decides to take those from his enemy prisoner, so that he can return to his lines without being branded a deserter. A great plan, but one that quickly flounders as the upper hand switches back and forth between the two sides.

Who will win the day? And will the night of bonding help heal the schism between the two groups and across America as a whole? Probably not, as the battle is still raging and those extras seem keen to get home…

This was an awful film that looked like some Civil War re-enactor’s pet project that somehow found its way onto Amazon Prime. Fair enough it was based on a true incident, but one thing this effort will teach you is that not all true events are deserving of being recreated. There probably was a decent story in here to be fair, but the execution was just plain awful.

I was expecting some great revelation or horror, but in the end it was the old 'futility of war' message rote large for no entertainment or learning benefit whatsoever.

It didn’t look like there was a profession actor on show at all, which is fair enough as they also dispensed with a writer, editor and director too! Some scenes rambled on forever with the fireside letter reading section taking up an inordinate amount of the film for zero benefit whatsoever. You may say it built up Harrison’s character but alas there was none to begin with and all this added was that he couldn’t read.

The attempts at healing the divides were ham-fisted as was the conclusion which basically shouted ‘That’s the budget done, bring back the re-enacting guys’. Overall this was a painful watch and it’s just a pity Lincoln isn’t about to free this guff from my consciousness.

Best Bit : Opening Battle Scenes - ‘W’ Rating  : 8/23

No.341 : Warrior Queen (1987)

Warrior Queen at the IMDb

Time to class things up here with this historical drama which charts the last days of Pompeii. OK, the Frankie Howerd version may have been more accurate and had better sets, but this has Sybil Danning and a man being killed with a Frisbee.

We open with Sybil arriving in town in a small bandwagon. They are attacked by some brigands who quickly see off her soldier escort. They didn’t bargain on Sybil however, as she manages to kill three of them without breaking a sweat or looking a bit interested.

Meanwhile in town, the slave auction is in full swing and the director wastes no time in setting out his stall for his target audience. Let’s just say the bidders insist on a full inspection of the goods.

A ‘Ben Hur’ wannabe shows up and has a bit of a scrap with a non copyright ‘Hercules’ and Donald Pleasence takes the pay cheque as Emporer Clodius who fawns over Sybil a lot and does little else. The plot here is as thin as the slave girls’ tops but essentially we get a few days ‘slice of life’ entertainment before Vesuvius blows its top in magical stock footage fashion.

Sybil’s motivations aren’t clear but she does befriend one slave girl and takes a necklace off her and gives it back at the end. I guess she’s meant to be some sort of emancipation figure but she hardly has any lines and zero character development. Ben Hur and the slave girl we follow have a small romance arc that sees him killing folk in the arena whilst she gets raped in the woods. They all come through it unscathed, although the same can’t be said for their wardrobes.

There isn’t any real social commentary here with the elaborate fighting games and freely available sex doubtless meant to signal that this society was too bloated and due a bit of cleansing. Some of the exposition may have been lost in the 68 minute cut I saw on Amazon prime, but I doubt it. This was a ‘Caligula’ type soft porn with history used to dress up a bit of smut. Alas the production values were not matched with stock footage obtrusively appearing for the crowd and eruption scenes, and many of the sets looking distinctly wobbly despite the Rome locations.

This is just short enough to not be a total waste of time as you will get a couple of cheezy laughs and some titillation for your hour long investment. Don’t be basing your thesis on it though, unless its titled ‘Crappy & Inaccurate Boob Fests I Have Seen’.

Best Bit : I bid 1000 Sesterti! ‘W’ Rating 8/23

No.340 : Wonder Wheel (2017)

Wonder Wheel at the IMDb

Towards the end of this film Kate Winslet’s character says “Save me the bad drama” - if only she’d given this advice at the start! This offering, from writer and director Woody Allen, was decent but a bit derivative and for the most part, poorly acted.

The film, set in the 1950s,  starts with Justin Timberlake addressing the viewer and telling them he has a story for them. This breaking the fourth wall approach is rarely a good idea and I’ve no idea why it was employed here. Justin plays Mickey, a lifeguard at the beach on Coney island, near to where the titular ‘Wonder Wheel’ fairground ride is situated. Winslet is a waitress in a clam bar and she’s married to Jim Belushi who operates the merry-go-round. They live in a small apartment at the fairground with Winslet’s young son, who has a penchant for fire raising.

Their set up is disturbed when Belushi’s daughter, Juno Temple, shows up. She hasn’t seen Pop for five years since she left to marry a mobster. She has now left the hood and is on the run from his retribution, given she’s spoken to the Feds and all. After some reconciliation Juno moves in and gets a job at the clam bar. She wants to better herself however, and starts attending night school. Winslet meanwhile is approaching 40 and is resentful that her fledgling acting career has given way to a life of washing dishes.

Things look up for Kate however when she’s spotted walking the beach by Timberlake who quickly starts boffing her under the boardwalk. Kate falls for the lifeguard who himself is looking to further his writing aspirations. Things reach a head when Trousersnake takes a shine to Juno and the mob, in the shape of Paulie Walnuts and Bobby Bacala, start to zero in on their target. While the doomed love affair(s) survive and can happiness be found while the wheel keeps on turning?

I was hoping for more from this film given its decent credentials, but it turned out to be a sub par ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ with all of the shouting and lost ambition but none of the drama or characters.

Winslet was decent in the lead but she fell apart at the end with her motivations flying all over the place. “I’ve been drinking” she slurs at one point - well that’s no excuse really. Jim Belushi basically yells his whole script in a dirty vest and I was expecting him to bellow ‘Stellla!’ at any point. Timberlake’s character was thinly written - they tried to pitch him as a wannabe Eugene O’Neill but he was basically an extra from ‘Baywatch’ banging the local talent.

The script, which saw laughable mob hit men stalking the boardwalk, was poor and the line between drama and comedy was breached several times. I think this was mostly unintentional, although the fire raising child did have a couple of moments of levity to break the kitchen sink drama.

The costumes and locations were decent although the main apartment was obviously a set and the summer set film looked like it had been shot in the middle of the winter.

Overall it was a decent distraction, but ultimately a disappointment and another to add to the lengthy footnotes of Allen’s career.

Best Bit : Under the Boardwalk with Kate ‘W’ rating 13/23

 

No.339 : Wildling (2018)

 

Wildling at the IMDb

Here’s a film that flirts with a few genres but ultimately is a bit unsatisfying and undefined.

Tiny tot Anna lives in a cabin in the woods. ‘Daddy’ brings her food but she’s not allowed to leave lest ‘the wildlings’ get her. They are described as children eating savages and Anna has to make do with peeking out her window throughout her childhood. As she enters puberty and has her first period ‘Daddy’ starts to give her injections that make her sick. Eventually she begs to be allowed to go to ‘the better place’ and ‘Daddy brings in his gun. He’s not up to the task and decides to shoot his own head off instead.

The now teen Anna is discovered and coaxed back to civilisation by Liv Tyler’s policewoman character, who’s more of a social worker than a cop. Strangely the social services let Liv take Anna home where she meets Liv’s brother, Ray.

The film then shifts from what appeared to be a kidnap and abuse story to one of someone trying to integrate into society having never experienced it before - a bit like ‘Encino Man’. We get the usual bitchy girls and school bullies and soon Anna blossoms and goes to a cool party with Ray where she gets a bit of kissy face - but wait! Her teeth start falling out and when she runs off to the woods she rips the throat out of a would be rapist.

It’s soon clear that we are in the realms of the supernatural with Anna being one of the wildlings that she was once taught to fear. As she slowly transforms she has to deal with hunters, her admirer and ‘Daddy’ who it turns out is as good at suicide as he was at parenting.

I liked the first hour of this film but it lost it’s way in a haze of ropey CGI effects and confused character development. It reminded me of the TV show ‘Grimm’ with supernatural goings on running parallel with everyday life. The town has a man with a wolf’s head hat walking about with no issues as well as a well armed posse of wildling hunters who seem to have a free rein to shoot up and burn anything they like. No wonder as sheriff Liv Tyler is as effective as an umbrella in a hurricane.

Bel Powley was pretty good in the main role of Anna, with her bulbous eyes and bewildered looks selling the character’s introduction into the real world. She was let down with the transformation effects which gave her a hairy back and a bad manicure. Later on she went full wolf, and it looked more animated than Wile E Coyote.

There were probably three films boiled into one here, with the first of the locked up girl being the most interesting although somewhat reminiscent of ‘Room’. Later on the high school element was a bit overly familiar with the transformation and hunt portion being faintly daft.

All in all it was a decent and entertaining offering with a few wrong foots sprinkled about to keep you guessing.

Best Bit : Opening 20 minutes ‘W’ Rating 14/23

No.338 : Whiplash (2014)

Whiplash at the IMDb

 Oh good ‘whiplash’? - that’s either going to be about kinky sex or that bloke in Iron Man 2. Jazz drumming you say? Good stuff!

The ‘whiplash’ of the title is in fact a jazz piece that requires a lot of fast drumming and one that won’t be on my Spotify play list any time soon. The film is however a triumph and even if you have a strong aversion to jazz you’ll still find a lot to like here.

Miles Teller, of   War Dogs fame plays Andrew, a student at a prestigious New York music school. He lives alone with his Dad and goes to see films with him. He has no friends, possibly because he plays jazz drums, but does manage to ask out the concession stand girl at the movies.

He aspires to get in the school band run by J. Jonah Jamieson himself, J.K. Simmons but the teacher is a hard taskmaster. He sets Andrew challenges and plays him off his fellow drummers in the hope of getting the best out of him. From the outside he appears to be a bully but he is only trying to give the world the next jazz great by making his protégée really earn the accolades he craves.

There are a lot of drumming solos and training montages as Andrew's hands bleed at the workload. Things come to a head when Andrew gets some whiplash of his own in a car accident on the way to a contest where he manages to get on stage despite bleeding all over. He attacks his teacher when stood down and is expelled from school.

News comes out of another student who killed himself under the pressures placed on him by his teacher and Andrew is pressured into testifying against his mentor. Will he do so? and are the sacrifices demanded worth the cost?

This is a cracking study of obsession and, even if you hate jazz, you can’t help but be impressed with the passion and dedication on show. The music is mostly a noise to me but Simmons is excellent as the maniac teacher throwing furniture and finding fault in every offering. Teller looks a lot older than his character’s 19 years (he was 25 at the time) and he maybe doesn’t seem as vulnerable as a result. His romantic subplot goes nowhere, apart from showing what a solitary life it is that he is aspiring to.

The finale is a bit drawn out and self indulgent and to be honest if I’d bought a ticket for the concert I’d have been in the bar long before the drawn out drum solo got halfway. Still they go to jazz concerts and get what they deserve.

Simmons rightly won the Oscar for his performance, but strangely for Best Supporting actor - that must have been politics as this was basically a two-hander throughout. I liked the direction and editing that kept my interest, even when we were treated to another few bars of ‘whiplash’ for the twentieth time.

It may annoy your neighbours but this is an enjoyable and well made film with two excellent performances and a fine study on going that extra mile for perfection.

Best Bit : Losing the CDW  ‘W’ Rating 18/23

No.337 : Wheels of Fortune (2020)

 

Wheels of Fortune at the IMDb

Badger out of ‘Breaking Bad’ stars in this redneck inheritance comedy which registered a single smile with this viewer. We open with Jeff Fahey, who we liked in ‘Machete’, out for a sky dive. His chute and backup fail but he is saved by a friend who  grabs him and eases him back towards Earth. Sadly the rescuer’s parachute is cut by a drone, but at least he softens Jeff’s landing. It’s not Jeff’s day however as he is then hit by a truck and seemingly fatally injured.

He runs a large company and his grasping children arrive at his bedside to hear who will inherit the business. Instead they are told of his long lost son Bo (Badger) who was the product of him slumming it some years ago. Bo is a mechanic for a tractor pull champion and he still laments the day when the lack of a clutch cable meant he couldn’t win the big race as a child, sending him on a losing spiral that has persisted ever since.

His fortunes look up however when Jeff, who has died off-screen, sends his lawyer to Bo to offer a challenge, the like that is only ever heard of in movies. The challenge is that if Bo can get a podium finish in four races over the next month he will inherit something that isn’t really specified. He isn’t keen at first, but the offer of $100 a day expenses for him, his idiot friend Noodle, and the love interest Mandy seals the deal.

The film then takes many predictable turns with the conniving relatives trying to stop Bo’s progress, him becoming an ‘internet sensation’ and of course him losing sight of what’s really important. With three podium finishes in the bag it all comes down to the monster truck racing - can Bo win the challenge? And what inevitable surprises lies in wait?

This was an awful Netflix find that has very little to recommend it. It was like a mash up between ‘Brewster’s Millions’ and ‘Run Ronnie Run’ but not nearly as enjoyable as either. It was a comedy, so the ridiculous premise can be excused to some degree, but how does a guy who dies unexpectedly manage to have an elaborate plan all set up, including a message dispensing suitcase and a schedule set up that begins the day of his untimely demise? That’s your clue actually; I just wonder if in real life the lawyers would tell him to piss off with the relatives getting him declared mental from the off.

Badger is kinda likable in the lead but his shtick runs thin early on and he doesn’t have what it takes to hold the whole thing together. The conniving relatives weren’t menacing at all and their characters were underwritten. I did like love interest Mandy, but she could have done without the inflated lips.

The only chuckle raised with me was the wise ticket collector who got the sack for dispensing sage advice. Other than that it was a dull ride though various motor sports with real footage inter-cut with our hero doing the ‘driving’.

The redneck humour offered no laughs with exchanges like ‘It’s a retinal scan’ / ‘You’re not sticking that up my butt’ being the standard on offer. If you are on your third bottle of wine you may snigger at the man being trapped in a porta-potty, but this was low brow fare that won’t last ten minutes in the memory.

Best Bit : ‘You're fired’  ‘W’ Rating 7/23

No.336 : Where’s the Love? (2014)

Where's the Love? at the IMDb

No, it’s nothing to do with the Black Eyed Peas’ song - they didn’t use the contraction in any event. This is a made for TV movie about relationships and yes, we have scraped the barrel so far in our ‘W’ movie quest that we are through the base and nearing the Earth’s core.

Our lovely leads are Sebastian and Ryan (a lady) who are a married couple who host a successful daytime talk show called ’Where’s the Love’ [ Ron Howard voice : That’s the name of the film!] that deals with failing marriages. They are both doctors and dispense wisdom and advice to their guests who have issues in their relationships. The big twist is however that our couple also have issues of their own! Can the physicians heal themselves?

The couple survived a rocky period in their marriage when Seb had an affair. The couples’ agent and producers keep pressurising them on take on new jobs and tours meaning they have to shore up their relationship’s crumbling façade whilst never fixing what is at the heart of their dilemmas.

Things come to a head when they are ambushed at a book launch with pictures of Seb out with the same model with whom he had the affair. Ryan ditches his ass and gets her long hair cut to show the changes she plans on making. Seb gets bumped from the show which is rebranded as a programme for divorcees with Ryan hosting solo.

Seb meanwhile gets a job on radio and releases his own book about men making bad choices. Whilst we wait for the inevitable reconciliation there is a side plot of the agent and producer who hate each other but are slowly building respect and maybe feeling a little more? When will all the principals have a big kiss and let this thing be over? Not quickly enough!

This was a horrible cheesy film about relationships that was intercut with captions cards offering wry homilies which were clearly designed for woman to nudge their long suffering spouses and say ‘That’s you that is’. You also have short clips of couples talking about their own relationship issues, just in case the central relationship issues spine of the film wasn’t enough for you.

In truth the film was basically marriage guidance dressed up as entertainment. I wasn’t entertained at all and the ending was so pat and unearned that you are left feeling that they must have run out of money and just jettisoned the previous 80 minutes of character development to just say ‘and they lived happily ever after’. Nothing of substance or value was learned, with the ‘secret’ of a good relationship being declared as 'honesty and communication'. And not boffing models, I’d imagine.

This isn’t a film directed at my demographic and I’m sure some will take the homilies to heart and decide to work at their relationship just as their partner is trying to leave via the bathroom window.

The production values were decent and the cast mostly likeable, but the material was thin and the message patronising. Seek your therapy elsewhere!

Best Bit : They were taken last week!  ‘W’ Rating 6/23

 

No.335 : What the Waters Left Behind (2017)

What the Waters Left Behind at the IMDb

As our regular reader will attest, we are not adverse to the odd foreign film here at the ‘W’ Movie Blog and, with that in mind, let’s head south to Argentina for this derivative murder fest.

We get some exposition to start as we learn of a small village that was beset by rising flood waters. It had to be forcibly evacuated by the military before it was totally engulfed with the population displaced - or where they? Obviously not.

Many years later a documentary film crew have returned to the village which has recently re-emerged, due to the falling floodwaters. They are pretty low rent, relying on an ancient VW camper van and some limited equipment. They have in tow a young woman who was a refugee from the village, and the plan is to capture her memories of the once vibrant town.

On the journey to the village we get to know our six victims, er, filmmakers, who have the usual list of quirks and character points such as love rivals and a small poodle owner. Yappy dug is definitely getting it.

They stop off at a small petrol station and visit the worst toilet this side of ‘Trainspotting’. The attendants are all a bit strange, especially the old woman who insists that they buy her pies in exchange for her ‘clearing up their shit. On the evidence seen, not much shit gets cleared up, even on a good day.

Our heroes get ripped off on the fuel and window screen wipe down so they roar off yelling abuse and ditching the rancid pies - huge mistake!

At the village things go OK at first with the refugee showing the team around and recounting some interesting tales. Their van however breaks down and it’s clear someone has cut the petrol pipe. They make the standard error of splitting up and soon they start to fall afoul of some colourful locals and a snake. As their numbers inevitably whittle down, we wonder who will survive and whether the ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ people have their copyright infringement lawsuit ready to go.

I think if this film was in English it would have been easier to dismiss as a clear knockoff in an already crowed survival horror genre. As it was, the Spanish language and exotic locations kept me interested or at least reading the subtitles.

It’s clear early on that the villains of the piece were a ‘Sawney Bean’ type cannibal family, with the gas station pies the first hint that maybe the vegan option wasn’t so bad. They revealed themselves gradually, and the look of sheep skull hats and massive cudgels was quite impressive and very ‘Silent Hill’.

The big surprise was nothing of the sort and I was only caught unawares as it was actually presented as such and not just assumed. The locations were excellent for the first hour with what looked like a real life disaster zone being used. Once the action decamped to an obvious set for the cannibals lair I lost interest and the film any momentum that it had earned.

There were a few bone crunching kills but nothing you haven’t seen before and better in films like ‘Wolf Creek’.

Overall this was an interesting pastime but it offered little new apart from some inventive locations and costumes. I’d seek my thrills elsewhere if I were you.

Best Bit : ‘Nearly Done’  ‘W’ Rating 11/23

 

No.334 : Where’s the Money (2017)

Where's the Money at the IMDb

Hmmm, for a film centred about higher education it’s disappointing that the interrogative statement that is the title hasn’t been furnished with a question mark. Still we’ve went over this old chestnut before with the question mark being considered unlucky in Hollywood. It begs the question therefore; how bad would this film have been if the correct punctuation was used?

Actually, it’s not that bad - it’s horrible, unfunny and morally dubious but I did get a few chuckles from the characters who were all desperate not to cause offence and be seen as racist. 

The film opens with some narration and an overview of L.A. and specifically South Central. Our hero, Del, works in a gym that his father and uncle started to keep kids away from crime. Sadly they didn’t practice what they preached and ended up in jail for a $1m bank robbery. Del is a bit hopeless and is constantly nagged by his Mom to fix an overhead air conditioner that isn’t properly secured. This is possibly the first use of Chekov’s air conditioner in a mainstream movie, so remember it for later.

Del’s Dad gets in touch to say that his Uncle is due to get out and he’s worried that he’ll grab the hidden bank job loot before he can. He tasks Del with recovering the cash, but alas the derelict house in which the money was hidden is now a frat house for a bunch of white college kids.

Del tries to get to the basement where the money is hidden by posing as a fire marshal but is costume is rumbled and he has to start another plan. There’s no suggestion that he should maybe get a job and report the money to the authorities, so instead he poses as a pledge to join the fraternity. The frat lads know that they need a token non-white, so Del stacks the deck in his favour by leading a revolt of all the minorities that he fails to join in with.

Del now has to go through a variety of initiation rituals to gain entry to the fraternity and the money laden basement. Will he get the hard to please girl and will the money be found - and kept?

The best part of this film was it’s approach to racism and social hang ups in general. The white characters dressed in KKK suits for the initiation, pointing out that their frat actually predated the KKK and their hats are less pointy. This led to some fun scenes in the ghetto where every character had a gat and said ‘motherfucker’. I don’t know if they were mocking stereotypes by having loads of them, but I don’t think so.

The whites were constantly conferring over the correct language to use with Del gaining mileage by calling them out for their use of ‘slaves’ and ‘auctions’. The whites were all embarrassed and the blacks had a good laugh with their faux outrage. It was a bit one note however so it was good that they had a couple of gross out scenes to balance the political commentary - the man licking out a rat was lovely.

The big showdown at the end went as you’d guess and it seemed bizarre that they just shared out the cash with no worries about the prospect of life in a super-max prison if they were found out. There was some measure of redemption and bonding all round, but what about the poor insurance company who had the rightful claim to that cash? No wonder my Aviva shares are in the toilet!

Overall a decent fun take on contemporary attitudes to race where no one got offended and we all learned a bit about acceptance, tolerance and stealing money.

Best Bit : Stealing the Time Capsule -  14/23

 

No.333 : White Space (2018)

White Space at the IMDb

Problem : You want to make a sci-fi film but don’t have a plot. Solution? Just repurpose some old public domain classic and you’re good to go.

Strange as it may sound this film is ‘Moby Dick’ in space. But wouldn’t that need a big whale you may ask? Well this has one, a big space whale, like the type that definitely exist, but just haven’t been found yet. Don’t ask about what they eat or how they propel themselves; it’s probably a metaphor or something.

We start in the future, but also in the past in 2123. A big fraggin’ space whale totals a ship killing nearly all of the crew. We then fast forward 24 years and learn that one of the young survivors now has his own ship and he’s out for revenge. He has a ragtag crew of basically every space faring stereotype you can think of, from the Bourbon drinking old salt to the nerdy, misfit engineer.

The crew are supposedly out farming food in space and the best pickings are in ‘white space’  where communications are difficult and perils await in the shape of space pirates and space whales. The crew are keen to harvest the ambergris and get home but the captain is twisted by his lust for revenge on the whale who took his father and he’s got a homing beacon on it that is now giving a signal.

On the way to the inevitable showdown the crew get robbed by some pirates and the engineer gets infected by a parasite that turns him into Vincent D’Onofrio out of ‘Men in Black’. They also have to contend with a saboteur and a snooper from a government agency who want to keep an eye on our heroes’ shady practices.

Who will survive? Would Melville approve and does watching this count as me having read the book?

This was a strange offering. It had long sequences that looked like cut scenes from video games and a ridiculous premise that wasn’t really explored - I’m none the wiser as to what ‘white space’ was meant to be. At least they didn’t hide their inspiration with the ship named ‘The Essex’ (the proto ‘Pequod’) and plenty of other Melville nods sprinkled along the way. The source material meant that you knew our captain was going to go full Ahab at some point, so it was no surprise when he did so. Maybe it was to the actor though, who was unconvincing when trying to display madness, mania or even slight excitement.

The subplot with the possessed engineer was poorly delivered also with a couple of nasty and brutal stabbings - haven’t these people heard of ray guns? It was maybe a budget issue as they had the same set of kitchen scales as my wife - maybe they were space antiques?

Virtually every space film you can think of gets a nod here with the slime coming through the roof onto the metal decking a straight lift from every Alien film, and the crew appearing like a ‘Firefly’ fan convention. None of the characters worked for me and some of the backstories were poor - one woman had several convictions for assaults with a frying pan. She must have been Scottish - at least she got to use her singular talent when confronted by the baddie!

Overall this was a strange offering which, despite some decent special effects, didn’t make a lot of sense and failed to engage with me on any level. One to throw back!

Best Bit : Mr Stabby Loses His Head  ’W’ Rating 11/23

 

No.332 : Winter of Our Dreams (1981)

 

Winter of Our Dreams at the IMDb

In the pretentious title stakes this one fall short of current incumbent Winter of Frozen Dreams but given it is all set in Sydney, Australia they couldn’t go with the ’frozen’ bit I assume. Bryan Brown stars as a renaissance man who runs a book shop and plays chess against his computer. He does of course drink beer and womanise so as not to turn off the bloke demographic. I doubt this would have been an easy sell to the average Ozzer so plenty of topless ladies are thrown into the mix, including some random topless sunbathers lying on a bit of grass.

Bryan is busy playing chess and selling books when he hears about a dead woman, who had been pulled from the harbour a week ago, being identified as a women he knew ten years ago. He used to be a political agitator but has now married and settled down with Gretel. The two have an open marriage which sees Gretel spend time with her young and hunky boyfriend. Not to be outdone Bryan wanders about with his shirt off most of the film but he doesn’t see much action between the sheets.

Anyway he goes to the girl’s funeral and later meets up with fellow attendee, prostitute Lou (Judy Davis). Bryan’s dead girlfriend had been on the game after they broke up and he is keen to learn about her decline and his involvement in her eventual demise. There is no murder angle as it is established early on it was suicide, but Bryan has to dig about his past to try and get some answers.

Some of these come from Lou who has the dead girl’s diaries, and unfortunately, her guitar. The focus alternates between the two leads with scenes of Bryan’s relationship interplayed with Judy struggling to get drugs and to understand her own life and prospects. She reads through the dead girl’s diaries and plays her maudlin music on some tapes.

Lou and Bryan spend a long weekend together where she gets off the junk and he rebukes her advances. Can these troubled souls find the answers they need to move on with their lives?

This was a decent slice of life but I didn’t learn anything or become invested in the characters. Judy Davis, who we know from Lewis Collins starrer Who Dares Wins, was good as Lou but I couldn’t get used to her tight ginger perm. She was pretty skuzzy as the drug addled whore, although I struggled to have sympathy for her character. Bryan did his usual serviceable performance but I got no emotional resonance from him and he seemed to be the same character he usually plays, chugging beer and being blokey.

It was fun to see Baz Luhrmann as Judy’s occasional flat mate who couldn’t get it on with the lady of the night. As an actor he makes a great director.

All in all this was an essay in damaged people trying to move on and therefore hardly what you’d consider to be classed as entertainment. There were decent performances, and sunny Australia looked nice, but overall you won’t learn much or invest in the largely one note characters.

Best Bit : Lou tries to pay her rent   13/23

No.331 : Where’s That Fire? (1939)

Where's That Fire? at the IMDB

OK, who asked for a black and white comedy that survived the Blitz and is now in the public domain? Oh everyone? Good news, ‘cos that’s what we’ve got.

Will Hay stars as hopeless fire chief Captain Viking. He manages two underlings and the three of them make the Stooges look like intellectuals. They get up to some funny hijinks, but how many have burned to death whilst they are squirting hoses at each other?

They work in a sleepy town, but one that seems to beset with fire related issues. They have had sixteen call outs and have not put out one fire - well they have, because otherwise they’d still be burning, as they point out to the councillors. The lads’ ancient fire engine takes ages to get set up and after the town hall burns down their bosses put them on a warning - modernise and put out one fire or they’ll all be sacked. 

This warning puts a light under our guys, so to speak, so they head off to a modern fire station to see what they can learn. Back home, Chief Viking who is a part time inventor, sets up some automation and the guys set about installing a fireman’s pole. This takes ages to get in the door and results in the breakage of just about every window in town.

Meanwhile a couple of scouts show up and ask to rent the fire engine for a film for £30. Our negligent heroes grab the money but unbeknown to them, the men are in fact criminals intent on stealing the crown jewels. The ancient engine is the same as that in the Tower of London and the baddies hope to ‘Trojan Horse’ their way in.

Can our heroes thwart the crime and save their jobs?

You know a film is ancient when Charles Hawtry is cast as a schoolboy. He’s actually quite good in it as he offers Viking some mathematical formulas as a solution to his fire pole issues.

The film is slapstick throughout with just a tad of drama tacked on at the end so they can claim a story. The three main cast members bounce off each other well, with each being more idiotic and greedy than the next. I liked Moore Marriott’s old coot who loved the bottle and wasn’t shy about lighting fires to earn a couple of quid.

Some of the set pieces were great fun with the fire pole manoeuvring being funnier and funnier the more ridiculous their schemes got. I usually bail out on something when you can see where it’s going, but there was a good ten minutes of broken windows and wilder solutions that didn’t waste a moment.

It was gentle fun with their horse Percy the brains of the outfit. At one point they are trying to put out a fire at a petrol station and they connect the hose to the petrol rather than to the water - deaths and massive property damaged must have ensued!

There was the odd kick in the pants a la Chaplin, but this was a lot more British with class issues and a stiff upper lip all present and correct. At only 70minutes this one doesn’t ask much of you and you will be rewarded with more than a few laughs and a nostalgic look at a long bygone age.

Best Bit : Automatic Horse Saddling  ’W’ Rating 17/23

 

No.330 : Why Me? (1984)

 

Why Me? at the IMDb

True life medical drama now in this 1984 made for TV movie. They can’t all be blockbusters, although we wish they were! This was a decent offering with a few unintentional laughs and a genuinely inspiring story.

Glynnis O’Connor stars as military nurse Leola Mae Harmon. She is recently pregnant but still runs to keep her figure. She drive a sweet Mustang but on her way to work one day disaster strikes. Whilst driving on the most obvious closed set road you’ll ever see, a poorly acting drunk overtakes a school bus and hits Leola’s car. The budget is blown in this early scene as the car flies off the road and somersaults a few times, depositing the non seatbelt wearing Leola on her face.

The paramedics are aghast at her injuries and disfigurement and she looks likely to die until Dr Stallings takes over her case in A&E. Dr Stallings, played by ‘Rico Dredd’ Armand Assante, has short hair and takes no nonsense. He immediately starts to plan the reconstruction of Leola’s shattered face, despite protests from his bosses, and casually lets her know her unborn baby is lost.

Meanwhile Leola‘s husband is having trouble coming to terms with his wife‘s injuries. He brings her a box of chocolates not realising that she is on an all soup diet. It doesn‘t help that the make up she‘s been given makes her look like an extra from ‘Star Trek‘ but he can‘t make love to her despite her baby doll nightie and kind offer of turning the lights off.

He‘s soon off the scene and Rico and Leola set about rebuilding her face. There will she shouting and tears but can she be put back together and will the 40 odd operations mean that doctor and patient will form a bond that goes beyond the hospital?

This isn’t the kind of film I would normally watch but it was OK for the genre and I could see it being inspirational to those with disfigurements or with aspirations to marry a doctor.

They made the husband out to be a right dick but I thought he tried his best. Taking the wife to a restaurant with gawking extras and an all soup diet couldn’t have been fun.

Assante got most of the big speeches and screen time with Leola largely mumbling though her sewn up mouth. The make up was poor with some scenes looking like she stuck some plasticine on herself for a joke. She was a strong character though, quickly getting back to work and helping others in situations similar to hers. She was prone to big outbursts, the effect of which was somewhat muted due to the fact that she had a sock in her mouth. When the drunk driver got off with a suspended sentence she almost brought the house down with an impassioned mumble.

I could have done without the mental imagery that the big break through of ‘vaginal tissue’ gave me, but the closing credits with some feel good captions and photos of the now recovered, real life, Leola made the whole painful journey worthwhile.

Best Bit : “…and for pudding?”  “Soup”  ‘W’ Rating 16/23

No.329 : Welcome to New York (2014)

 

Welcome to New York at the IMDb

You know that when a film opens with captions and the lead actor talking about how the following is a work of fiction, that it has probably encountered legal difficulties. Having seen the film, it’s not hard to see why, with the events depicted following closely those of the Dominique Strauss-Khan affair when he, whilst head of the IMF, was accused of raping a hotel chambermaid.

Gerard De-pa-du stars as a totally different character, a French politician called Devereaux. He is a fat and sleazy individual who spends the first half hour of the film grabbing and sniffing a stream of prostitutes in his luxury New York hotel suite. He clearly has no respect for women and this leads to him grabbing a chambermaid when she has the misfortune of chancing upon him as he exits the shower.

He knows he has done wrong and immediately heads to the airport. The maid has however went to the police and Gerard is pulled off his plane and put into jail. We see him processed through the system, including a ‘burn my eyes please’ strip search, and then his trial begins.

He has a rich wife in the shape of Jacqueline Bisset who pays his $1m bail and $60k rent on the house he is confined to during his trail. With teams of lawyers looking to discredit the victim, will he get off and will he mend his ways?

Directed by ‘Bad Lieutenant’ helmer Abel Ferrara this was never going to be an easy watch and it certainly delivered on that front. It was a brave performance by the morbidly obese Depardieu who wasn’t shy in showing all - must have been nice for him to see his willy again at least! He did get lots of scenes pawing at prostitutes and these were unsettling rather than erotic as his letchy hands and massive belly dominated the screen.

I could see why Strauss-Khan’s lawyers objected to the film as it’s clearly about him, with the same townhouse used as he rented during his trial, but they make it explicit that the character was guilty of the assault and got off due to backhanded tactics, whereas Strauss-Khan was acquitted - although he did reach a settlement with the claimant in her civil case.

The film fell between two stools in that it was not a documentary but it also wasn’t a work of fiction. They can speculate what happened but it did seem unfair to ride roughshod over one person’s rights whilst championing those of another. 

There were large sections of the film in French with no subtitles offered on my copy. I don’t know if that was a deliberate ploy to make some of the evidence uncertain or just to hide some of the slander.

The opening sections with the debauched life style and the middle sections in the jail were good, but the trail and outcome seemed rushed and skimmed over. Some old archive footage of a verdict was shown and I take it this was from the original case. It did cement the idea that the real case and the one shown here were one and the same, with both leaving questions unanswered.

This is not what you’d term ‘light entertainment’ but there were some strong and compelling scenes and excellent performances all round. Overall however it was a bit of a misfire, with me knowing less about the real case having watched this dramatization of it.

Best Bit : Gerard Has a Night In ‘W’ Rating 15/23

No.328 : Wedding at Graceland (2019)

 

Wedding at Graceland at the IMDb

I thought I’d up the ante and look for a bit more sex and violence to spice up the blog. Where else to look than the Hallmark Channel and a sugary sweet collaboration with the Presley estate? To be fair there is none of that sex and violence stuff, but there was a quizzical look at one point when it was discovered that two wedding cakes had been ordered.

The film sets its stall out early on with lots of touristy shots of Memphis played over Elvis crooning ‘Don’t Be Cruel’. We see a statue of the great man and it’s clear that filming rights for Graceland come with strings attached. Still there’s nothing in the way of subterfuge or sly product placement here - basically it’s 90 minutes of ‘Why don’t you have your wedding in the Graceland chapel?’ with added minor peril.

The film stars Kellie Pickler who seemingly came 6th in a series of ‘American Idol’. She has a daughter (no mention of the father) and a boyfriend, Clay, who used to be her teen sweetheart. The pair used sing together but Kellie was shepherded away from that life to get a business degree by her overbearing father and now works in a bank. She is now back with Clay following a reunion in the film ‘Christmas at Graceland’ which I don’t intend looking up.

Clay takes Kellie and her daughter to Graceland to ‘drop off some documents’ but wouldn’t you just guess it, he’s there to propose! They seem to have an open door policy at Graceland as all their friends are hiding nearby to offer their congratulations. Also in attendance is Graceland’s wedding planner who tells them that the chapel is booked up for a year - but wait! They have a cancellation in 3 weeks - can our happy couple set up their wedding in time?

What follows is an hour of minor setbacks as the families jet in and don’t immediately get on. Kellie’s father ‘The Major’ doesn’t take to Clay and acts like a Major asshole. Both Moms want to take charge and once a wedding planner is engaged things start to spiral out of control. Can the happy couple make it up the aisle and will the day end up just perfect, with everyone happy? Yes.

This was a well made, sugar laced, travelogue for Memphis and for the excellent facilities available at the Graceland mansion - don’t forget the Graceland Chapel and Graceland Guest House either! It was good to see inside the mansion and even Pricilla showed up for one awkward scene where she gives her blessing to the union whilst looking like The Joker.

I didn’t recognise anyone on show apart from Rob Moran whom you’ll know from most of the Farrelly Brothers films. There was a big star guest at the end whom Clay snagged using his music industry connections - I was hoping for Michael Bolton but it turned out to be Lee Brice - me neither.

Obviously I’m not the target audience here, but it was decent fun with the mild peril of the vicar getting flu set against a nice sunny backdrop, with added Southern homilies. It was strange that money was never mentioned as an issue with the extra harpists and doves being dismissed as too much hassle rather than ’how much is this going to cost?’ It was however a fantasy piece and you could see the film doing well with the pissed up hen party crowd - 'that bitch mother in law knows that frosting isn’t right' - that kind of thing.

Best Bit : I used to be a Chaplin in the army…  ‘W’ rating 14/23

No.327 : When We First Met (2018)

 

When We First Met at the IMDb

Watching this film you may get the feeling that it’s Groundhog Day, not because it's is a funny and well crafted piece of original entertainment, but because it rehashes large portions of the Bill Murray classic. That’s not to say it just rips off ‘Groundhog day’ - it also rips off ‘Big’ and ‘Back to the Future’ too.

Still these films are all 30+ years old so let’s see if this modern take adds anything to the overly familiar genre. Adam Devine, who you’ll know from the ‘Pitch Perfect’ films as well as ‘Why Him?’ stars as Noah, a jazz bar pianist, who is attending the engagement party of Avery and Ethan. He remembers that three years ago he met Avery at a Halloween party and fell for her. He wasn’t able to seal the deal however, and the next day Avery met Ethan and his chance was lost.

He gets drunk and gets a ride home from Avery’s photographer flatmate, Carrie. The pair stop off at Noah’s jazz bar and he forlornly wishes in the antique photo booth that he had the chance to do things differently. Happily the photo booth seems to have been made by the same people who made Tom Hanks’ ‘Zoltar’ machine and Noah wakes up three years earlier on the day of the fateful Halloween party.

He spends a lot of time coming to terms with his situation but eventually chooses a different costume and approach towards Avery to get out of the friend zone and into the loving relationship he thinks is his destiny. As you will probably guess things don’t go to plan and after the party he wakes up in a now changed present to see where he is and what kind of relationship he has with the elusive Avery. As the present days flounder he retreats back to the photo booth to try again...and again.

Sometimes he’s rich and discontented - others see him branded a stalker, or with Avery but with her not loving him. Will his repeated trips back in forth in time lead to the problem being fixed or does his true route to happiness lie in a different direction?

This Netflix film was OK as a Sunday afternoon distraction but it offered nothing new and the outcome was no real surprise. The whole film was essentially that scene in ‘Groundhog Day’ where Bill Murray tries to fast forward his romance plans by remembering lots of details about Andie Macdowell’s life and creeping her out. No self respecting film will ever let the hero profit with such knowledge and, as ever, they demand that their character learn, grow and accept some truths before he can move on.

Of course there was no reason given for the magic in play and that’s fair enough, but acceptance came easy to Noah and at no point did he try to but Facebook shares or bet Leicester to win the league. Still, it said fantasy on the tin and that’s what you get.

I liked that they didn’t make the love rival an asshole, with Noah coming off the worst due to his manipulative machinations. The same scenes played out several times and it would have been good to have seen them from different perspectives, as it did come across as a bit dull and lazy.

There were no laughs or surprises, but the young and good looking cast seemed to be having fun and, if you don’t demand too much, you may get a slice for yourself.

Best Bit : Oh I’m Fat Now  ‘W’ Rating 14/23

No.326 : White Cargo (1942)

White Cargo at the IMDb

It’s the present day (well it was in 1942) and a young man is starting work at a rubber plantation in Africa. The office is clean and has air conditioning. 'It wasn’t always like this' says the aging boss as the film dissolves back to the frontier days of 1910.

 

A small group of British rubber workers manage a large plantation and many native workers as they fight the climate, lack of women and disease. The booze soaked doctor wanders about stealing folks’ whiskey and plantation manager Walter Pidgeon is being driven bonkers by the endless steam of young trainees sent to help, who all ask about the hunting and the friendliness of the natives.

 

New man Langford is appalled by the sloppy operation and vows to set a good example by not drinking and shaving every day. His pith helmet and lack of language skills amuse the natives and his plant rearing skills leave a lot to be desired.

 

After half an hour of them floundering about we meet the star attraction - native woman  Tondelayo, played by Hedy Lamar. Tondelayo has a bit of a reputation, possibly as a Hollywood star blacked up as a native, as her hair and make up is always perfect despite the humid jungle conditions and the seeming lack of a hairdressers. Her English is poor and she refers to herself in the third person - ‘Tondelayo like silk and trinkets’. This quickly gets old but Langford is soon mesmerised by her bra top and willingness to please.

 

The other men at the plant, who look to have had their own share of encounters with the naughty native, try to warn him off but soon the pair are married. A few months pass and Tondelayo is bored - will she take ‘till death do us part’ literally and will Pidgeon’s local law mete out a fitting punishment for her? Maybe a trip back to the present day will reveal all!

 

I quite liked the first half hour of this film which saw a bunch of character actors all bicker and offer up a few laughs. Lamarr certainly brightened things up when she arrived but her annoying speech pattern and unlikely look took any realism out of the film and you just knew she was going to screw over the first sucker to give her the time of day.

 

Fair enough she was a cracker, and the jungle didn’t have a lot of options, but it seemed extreme for someone to offer her marriage despite her still asking for tat in the midst of a proposal. Still that’s women for you!

 

I liked Walter Pidgeon best as the Clark Gable like plant manager who was going slowly mad though the heat and tedium of his role. The familiar part of the dipso doc was well executed by Frank Morgan but I was less convinced by the love struck Richard Carlson.

 

The film had good locations and, although I doubt they navigated the Congo for the sets, there was a good sweaty and uncomfortable vibe about the whole affair. If they had made Tondelayo a bit more convincing it would have been a better film but I guess they knew their market and Hedy in a bra for an hour guaranteed success.

 

 

A fun oddity which will probably be buried forever more due to it’s use of black face and indigenous worker abuse - and rightly so!

 

Best Bit : Acclimatise! ‘W’ rating 14/23

 

No.325 : What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (1974)

 

What Have They Done to Your Daughters? at the IMDb

Well if nothing else, at least this Italian effort secures the ‘Longest title’ award from this long running blog - eat that ‘W.’!

I found this on Amazon Prime and for all intents and purposes it looked like a badly dubbed exploitation flick and, to a great extent, it was. It did however try to veer into social commentary; moral high ground that crumbled somewhat when you have a look at that poster!

The film opens with a caption saying that the film serves as a reconstruction of the facts - the implication being that all the brutal murders and teenage nudity are nothing to do with them, but are due to those bad folks who wrote the script. They just made the film you understand.

The film’s stall is immediately set out as some policemen burst into a flat to find a naked teenage girl, who has been hung from the rafters. We meet Detective Silvestri, who is a dead ringer for Henry Cavill and new to the job lady DA Stori who has a bit of Sophia Loren about her. The death initially looks like a suicide, but after some fortunate detective work involving a peeping Tom, they decide the girl has been murdered.

The grisly death is soon all over the papers including a full frontal front page of the dead girl hanging from the rafters, despite her being only 15 - at least the actress was 20 at the time, but is was still unnecessary.  The girl gets identified and her mother reveals, in a naked daughter flashback, how she discovered the teen was taking birth control pills. Mum engaged a private eye to watch over her wayward daughter, but this lead cools when the cops find his car complete with his body in several pieces. These are comically put back together by the boys in the morgue with his wife insisting on a full look before screaming the place down.

All is not lost though as an audio tape is found that reveals lots of teenage girls are part of a prostitution ring that involves some influential people. Soon a motorcycle riding, cleaver wielding nutter is on the scene and every girl - and the cops are in danger. Who will survive the chopper onslaught?  And how high does the conspiracy go?

This film was a decent bit of exploitation slasher nonsense for the first hour, but it ran out of puff towards the end with the big finale looking daft and staged - well the big crowd behind the barriers was a clue!

Closing captions revealed that 8,000 girls go missing in Italy every year and nothing was being done. How kind of the producers then to make this kind of risible nonsense that would appeal only to the kinds of people they were looking to decry? Teen girls jumping around in the buff between scenes of gory, and at times comic, murder made for an unsettling viewing experience.

The main cast were decent albeit badly dubbed. The detection angle faded badly as the film progressed with the cleaver baddie being identified when they checked who had bought motorbike tyres recently, with one purchaser being listed as a butcher. Didn’t know Goodyear needed your CV to sell you a couple of tyres!

There were a couple of half decent chases but the villain was pretty ineffective and there was no real mystery or scares.

As a moral piece the film floundered badly, and as an entertainment it failed miserably. There were a couple of unintentional lighter moments but these were lost in a morass of suspect subject matter and unconvincing body parts.

Best Bit : Let’s Put This Guy Back Together  ‘W’ Rating 10/23

No.324 : White Oleander (2002)

 

White Oleander (2002) at the IMDb

When you carry out a Google search on ‘W’ films, one of the most prominent is ‘White Oleander’. For some reason I’ve always avoided it. It does have a heady IMDB rating of 7.1 and boasts a stellar cast of Michelle Pfeiffer, Robin Wright Penn and Renee Zellweger as well as Billy Connolly; but it has never appealed.

Still, needs must, so here we go. To start with a ‘white oleander’ is a poisonous plant and the film concerns a girl’s journey through a succession of care homes after her mother (Pfeiffer) is put in jail after killing her boyfriend, Connolly - maybe he left one too many wee jobbies in the toilet for her liking? - the matter isn’t fully explored.

Our old friend the non-liner narrative is employed so a lot of stuff has to be pieced together, but we soon get the idea that a broken childhood is in play and that emotions and relationships are the main focus, which will need some careful analysis. You can see why this one was well down the ‘must see’ list!

To be fair the film does  keep a decent pace and your buy in is committed to early on. Alison Lohman is excellent as our main protagonist, Astrid, and you’ll probably know her from being the young Jessica Lange in ‘Big Fish’ and from ‘W‘ favourite ‘Where the Truth Lies'. The film is told from her perspective and, initially, her world seems all askew as her mother is carted off to the clink as she is placed into a succession of foster families. The first family host loads of troubled kids and they try to teach their charges the benefits of the good book. Alas the ‘good book’ seems to be the Karma Sutra as a lot of shagging and associated jealousy goes on, that sees Astrid cast out of this home and into several others.

Meanwhile Pfeiffer is writing to Astrid from prison to explain her actions and to beg forgiveness. We also get snippets of her explosive relationship with Connelly which don’t really ring true, but are fun all the same. Despite her miserable existence in a care home, Astrid does find some happiness in a fledgling relationship with Patrick Fugit, who still has his ‘Almost Famous’ haircut present and correct.

Things look up when Astrid (who at this point looks at least 20 - the actress was in fact 23) is placed with a new foster family - Renee Zellweger and her husband. This was never a promising placement as the husband was probably already having an affair, and when Zellweger goes to meet Pfeiffer in prison, we know things won’t end well. When Zellweger achieves the Guinness World record for ‘longest lie-in on record‘, Astrid is again back in the system - can she ever find happiness and freedom from her jailbird Mom who has a svengali type influence over her?

If you like ‘problem people’ this film will be a hit for you - I thought everyone involved was a bit whiny and needy, and I was glad when it was done. To be fair it was well made with the confusing and non-linear narrative well laid out, with Astrid’s suitcase dioramas being explained as the film progressed. I didn’t really buy her relationship with the boyfriend and Connolly was woefully underused - I don’t think he had a single line to camera - he's only seen in the background, being abused by Pfeiffer. Nice work if you can get it.

Pfeiffer was the standout as the chilling and controlling mother although she looked a bit too well scrubbed after years in the big house.

The main killing was only touched on and we have at assume Connolly had been fed too much of the titular plant. The point of the film was the mother-daughter relationship and it’s fair enough that the focus was on that. There just seemed to be several more interesting films going on in the background that were tantalisingly just out of reach for this viewer.

A decent effort that will no doubt resonate with many who have mother issues. I just felt it was a bit dull and unsatisfying.

Best Bit : Fun Times With Renee ‘W’ Rating 13/23