No. 356 : Woman of the Hour (2023)

 

Woman of the Hour at the IMDb

Anna Kendrick stars and directs this film which, although based on a promising premise, was ultimately disappointing.

 

It’s the 1970s and Sheryl, played by Kenrick, is an aspiring actress. She fails to get any proper acting jobs but her agent promises her some exposure by casting her as the girl on a TV dating show.

As she goes about her business and prepares for the gig we also get regular vignettes of a photographer who is also a serial killer. He meets and enraptures various woman and takes them on photo shoots in the desert, before murdering them. These sequence were very matter of a fact and brutal and this caused my wife to bail out after 40 minutes. I can see why as the scenes were disturbing and the film as a whole can’t be seen as entertainment.

 

Still, I pushed onto the end and although it was decent, the film was unsatisfying and seemed somewhat embellished, which having read up on the details, appears to be the case.

 

The film is well realised with cheezy 70’s sets and costumes, so it is a bit jarring when Sheryl is full on ‘me too’ slagging off the idiotic men and suffering the host who mutters the ‘C’ word in her direction. I’m not saying it was right, but what we saw on screen didn’t ring true of the 1970’s that I remember.

 

The actual TV show begins about an hour into the film and Sheryl is described as ‘the Woman of the Hour’ which seems a bit of an unlikely way to justify the name of the film, which doesn’t make much sense anyway.

 

The show rumbles on with the sassy Sheryl going off script and coming up with her own complicated questions to flummox the dopey male suitors. I may be off target here, but I’m guessing a tightly scripted TV show wouldn’t tolerate such dalliances – ask me about my ‘Weakest Link’ experience!

 

The host, not unreasonably, gets irritated with Sheryl, but she finds an ally in the make up woman. Meanwhile an audience member recognises the murderer as a criminal and tries to get him arrested but is thwarted by idiot men, who seem over represented in this picture.

 

The serial killer demonstrates his wit and charm – as well as his backstabbing skills against his fellow bachelors - and wins the day and a date with Sheryl. Despite picking him Sheryl soon smells a rat and has a narrow escape after an awkward dinner. As a coda we see the killer's next attempt at a kidnap and murder before some captions tell us how things played out.

 

I think this story about a killer who happened to appear on a TV game show was a bit thin for a full feature. I feel sure that all of Sheryl’s ad-libbed questions and her after show date were all invented and I doubt the added tension of the person reporting the killer during the taping actually happened. As I mentioned this seemed like a jarring modern take on a 50-year-old incident and it didn’t ring true.

 

The direction by Kendrick was OK but some scenes lingered too long, and the pacing was poor. I also disliked the jump around timeline, with it often unclear where we were with the serial killer’s journey.

 

Overall it’s probably worth a look but ultimately it is a small piece of TV trivia stretched beyond breaking point to justify a full feature.

 

Best Bit: The closing scene with the girl acting for her life was well done

‘W’ Rating 12/23

No.350 : Wildlife (2018)

Wildlife at the IMDb

It’s Montana in 1960 and all is not going well with Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan’s marriage. They are Jerry and  Jeanette and they have a teenage  son Joe. Clearly the writer got stuck on the ’J’s page in his ’name your character’ book.

Wild forest fires are burning across the state meaning the air quality is poor and the kids are receiving fire training. Jerry works at a golf course but is quickly dismissed, with Joe present, for gambling with the guests. We learn he has trouble keeping jobs, meaning that the family is always on the move.

We see him with a couple of beers, so it’s clear he’s immediately become an inveterate drunk. He refuses menial jobs, meaning that Jeanette has to get a job teaching swimming and Joe one after school at a photography studio. He’s happy to do this as it means he doesn’t have to play football which he dislikes but his father expects.

Jerry has a few breakdowns and speeches Willy Loman style, and rashly accepts a dangerous, low paid, job putting out the fires. Jeanette is aghast at first but soon starts to act up and walking out with an older, wealthier man whom she met when she taught him to swim. She takes Joe to meet him and the boy sees him giving Mom a special goodnight kiss. He also sees his ass when he stops over one night.

Joe develops a friendship with a girl classmate, but when Jerry returns and Jeanette announces she’s leaving, he has to witness the final throes of their marriage. What can be salvaged from the wreckage? And will Joe be scarred by the messy break-up of his parents?

This film started out well and for the first half hour I was quite engaged. Gyllenhaal is always watchable and the film suffers when he exits stage left for the middle third. His struggles with authority and keeping a job were interesting and it’s a shame his character wasn’t developed more. Instead the main focus was on their son Joe who, although well played by  Ed Oxenbould (see The Visit), he was a bit dull. Part of his character was that he was a late developer, but he spent a lot of the film staring with a quivering bottom lip.

I think the idea was that he was powerless to intervene as his parents' marriage and, by proxy, his life disintegrated. The raging fires were a strong metaphor and it was no surprise when erstwhile fire-fighter Jerry became a crazy fire starter when trying to sort out his problems.

I didn’t buy into Jeanette’s character arc, who went from doting Mom to drunk floozy almost overnight. Of course she was responding to Jerry’s recklessness in taking the fire fighting job but it didn’t ring true that she’s have the ancient Warren in her bed, with her son in the house, mere days after Jerry left the scene. Mulligan was decent as Jeanette and carried the 60’s fashions well but she was poorly served by  lazy writing and unbelievable character developments.

The film has a kind of  coda at the end where Mom comes back for a visit and the family is briefly reunited. This didn’t really resolve any issues but at least they got the photo for the poster.

Overall this was a decent period examination of a failed marriage but it was ultimately unsatisfying and more than a little dull.

Best Bit : Dinner at Warren’s  ‘W’ Rating 12/23

 

 

No. 322 : White Boy Rick (2018)

 

White Boy Rick at the IMDb

 Time for some true life crime biography next in the shape of this depressing and skuzzy drama that depicts the short crime life of Rick Wershe, who spent 30 odd years in jail prior to his recent release.

I had never heard of the case, but seemingly our hero was the youngest ever paid informant of the FBI at age 14 and the longest serving non-violent prisoner in the US penal system. These things considered, I had little sympathy for our protagonist and as such did not have too much affection for his bio-pic. That said, it was a decent offering but not one to love; more of a morality tale to remind you to stick in at school and not get involved in the selling of guns and narcotics. Duh.

We open with the young Richie and his Dad, Matthew McConaughey, buying firearms at a gun show. No, not me at the gym, an actual event for the sale of firearms. The 14 year old Richie spots a fake Kalashnikov which enables is Dad to get a good deal from the dealer. They make even more profit when Richie sells on the guns to the local drug lords with the addition of silencers, that Mahogany fashions in his basement.

Mahogany dreams of owing a video store - it is 1984 after all - and doesn’t mind dealing with drug pedlars, despite his own daughter being addicted to crack, if it helps to achieve his goal. Richie’s ‘in’ with the drug barons catches the attention of the FBI and soon agent Jennifer Jason Leigh has Richie on the payroll. They convince Ritchie to buy and later sell drugs so that they can infiltrate the gang. This doesn’t go well for Richie who gets a bullet in his guts for his trouble.

With no other means of support and a new baby to provide for, Richie starts to produce his own crack. Inevitably he gets caught and his FBI handlers are as much use as a cock flavoured lolly pop when Richie goes down for life. How did it end up here and can he cut a deal to earn his freedom? Is he a victim of society or a death dealer who got his just desserts?

This was a decent period offering with a great cast, but the subject matter and viewpoint weren’t to my liking and to be honest, to my mind, Richie got what he deserved. He was well played by the slow talking, but likeable Richie Merritt, but I had no sympathy for the character or his choices. It was rote large that his options were limited but he was clearly a poor drug dealer and his motivations didn’t excuse his actions.

Matthew McConaughey was good in his now familiar role of the lowlife scumbag - see ‘Killer Joe’ and his series of ‘True Detective’, but he couldn’t rescue the narrative here. He was a gun dealer who bought into his son’s drug ambitions. I liked the line when he said he’d maintained a good family and Richie pointed out he had a drug addict daughter and a screwed up son. You could say this was just a slice of life in the 1980s but why was Richie deserving of a bio-pic? He was made out to be on a path with no exits, but to accept that would be just accepting his criminal choices.

The period was well realised and there was an excellent supporting cast including a never rougher Jennifer Jason Leigh and a frankly miscast Eddie Marsan as some sort of drug lord.

The film ended with captions suggesting that Richie had been harshly treated but the film failed to elicit any sympathy from this viewer. There was no suggestion that Richie didn’t know what he was getting into, and although he inhabited a world with few options that didn’t excuse him dealing in deadly drugs.

When you have no sympathy for the lead in a bio-pic it’s hard for it to succeed but overall this was a well realised and enjoyable film, albeit one with a skewed moral compass.

Best Bit : Bruce Dern makes Pancakes ‘W’ Rating 17/23

No.249 : We Are Still Here (2015)

We Are Still Here at the IMDb

It’s winter 1979 and a middle age couple are heading towards their new Massachusetts home. We learn that they have recently lost their only son and the house, that they have bought cheaply, represents a new start. We know from the off that the house is a bit creepy and very beige, but the early signs of trouble are the usual false starts like a ball bouncing down the stairs and a broken photo frame.

They are soon greeted by a pair of neighbours with the man, Dave, strangely saying the house has not had fresh souls for 30 years while his wife presses a note into the woman’s hand telling her to get out of the house - she was unaware that her curtains were that bad.

They get around to unpacking and doing up the house but the sense of unease continues until an electrician, brought in to investigate a over hot basement, gets fried for his trouble. The suggested terror motif is quickly dispatched as he is confronted and Cajun cooked by some smoky figures with bright eyes. The couple aren’t put off - possibly because they got out of paying the electrician’s bill - but invite over a couple of relatives and their son and his girlfriend to visit.

The couple who are written off as ‘hippies’ have experience of the supernatural and the hope is that they can cleanse the house of the evil spirits and presumably the Kentucky fried electrician in the basement. The two couples head off to the local restaurant where they are made about as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool by the locals who know the secrets of the house, I'll be bound! Meanwhile the son and his girlfriend let themselves into the empty house and pay for pilfering the Scotch by being carved up by the evil house dwellers. This pair are effectively fodder as the monsters tidy up after themselves and these atrocities are left unknown to our heroes who assume they’ve just been stood up. Nice that the monsters were keen to keep their security deposit intact!

The hippy couple start their efforts to clear the house of the unwelcome visitors but they are about as effective as a fart against a tornado. Whilst the man hippy is eating his sock and poking himself in the eye the townsfolk decide to take matters into their own hands - if our heroes escape the evil in the house will descend on the town, so they head over to help the cinder people - huge mistake. Who will survive? And why didn’t they just burn the house down years ago rather than let it kill a bunch of folk every 30 years?

I liked this haunted house horror despite it’s threadbare plot and OTT violence. The 1970’s setting was well realised with the leads sporting no end of stylish turtle necks and double knits. The actors did a decent job as looking shocked a lot and no one was scared of getting their hands dirty, as more claret was spilled than in a winery explosion.

The premise was a bit weak with the burned bodies of a wronged family showing up every 30 years in need of a fresh family to feast on. There was no reason offered for this timescale or what they were after - nourishment? revenge? A straight to DVD horror? Who knows?

The twin baddies of the monsters and the compliant townsfolk were well done, although it was more for laughs at the end when the locals showed up to help and ended up as the main course themselves. The crackling and smoking family of basement dwellers were well done and exuded some real menace.

The ending was pretty satisfying and I liked the end credits sequence that featured a lot of local newspapers recounting the horrors that had occurred over the life of the house.

I don’t think this film was particularly scary but there were plenty of gruesome kills and a nice air of unease throughout. Definitely one to check out.

Best Bit : ‘We’ll help…aaarrrrghh!’
‘W’ rating 19/23

No.197 : Wholly Moses (1980)

Wholly Moses at the IMDb

Dudley Moore stars in this alleged religious comedy that boasts a few star cameos but lacks any laughs whatsoever.

We open with a bus tour of the Holy Land with Moore recovering from recent heartbreak. He talks to a girl and helps find her hat when it blows off. Needless to say it blows into a cave and they find a lost gospel - ‘The Book of Herschel’. As luck would have it Moore is an expert in ancient languages and as he reads the script we dissolve into the past where his words are acted out. All that in the first five minutes - we’re not talking a bout a slow burning labyrinth plot here!

The first bible tale to be lampooned is a lift from ‘Life of Brian’ with Hershel almost having the life that Moses had. As baby Moses is set adrift on his boat made from reeds another child is similarly dispatched. While Moses is found by a princess Hershel is brought up by a family nearby with his own father acting a a slave so he can keep watch. Not surprisingly the baby grows up to be Dudley Moore - the man has range! - and he haplessly finds his way up the social order. In one massively familiar scene a group of conspirators say ‘we need a real idiot to do the job’ just as Moore sticks his head through the curtains. We all saw that one coming! I think it was even old in biblical times!

What follows are risible scenes where Moore, as the Royal Astronomer, talks at length with a jive talking pharaoh who for some reason is a black teenager. He also acts as food tester but sadly the poison is not present. He later survives a massive battle with literally several troops on either side. The disconnected scenes are interlinked by Moore’s tiresome narration and the whole enterprise seems solely geared to shoehorning in as many B list celebrities as possible - oh look there’s Dom Deluise.

Wee Dud is then cast out into the desert and soon gets a job as a shepherd. He meets a beautiful girl - it’s her from the bus! - and is annoyed at having to keep up with the Moseses. His big chance comes when he stumbles across Moses getting his instructions from the burning bush and thinks the mission is for him. He sets off to Egypt to free the slaves and starts to believe he can perform miracles due to other unrelated events such as thinking he can part waters due to a dam being built upstream. If it started bad it gets worse as the curing of the unwilling beggar from ‘Life of Brian’ is performed in full.

As Dud nears the end of the ancient script you have to wonder why his agent didn’t throw the movie version straight in the bin. It’s not just that it totally unoriginal and devoid of any wit or merit it’s just so lazy and obvious that it’d be an insult to an ‘The Only Way is Essex’ viewer. Dudley has never laid claim to being a great actor but he’s basically just himself in both timelines. This can be funny if it’s a big and engaging personality but he’s not funny and can’t carry a small bucket never mind the whole film.

The script is appalling with loads of bible references piled up alongside jokes on the ass = bottom scale of funniness. The production values are also poor with California ‘doubling’ for the Holy Land. This is done with a couple of matte paintings and some costumes that look like they’ll be due back at the fancy dress shop by 5pm.

As you may have gathered ‘Wholly Moses’ was a god-awful mess and perhaps God should have rested on the day this was excreted out too. © Spinal tap.

Best Bit : The orgy of soddom was remarkably tame but we’ll take what we can get. 7/21

No.177 : Walter (1982)

Walter at the IMDb

A lightening of the mood now with this happy tale of a mentally challenged man who ends up in a loony bin wiping bums - wait! That’s a terrible fate!

Ian McKellan plays the title role in this film which was made for Channel 4’s first night of broadcasting. Why anyone tuned in for night two is a mystery. The tone is set from the off when a caring mother sets her handicapped son on a wall as a train approaches beneath. Once the train passes and the steam clears (for it is the olden days) she is dismayed to see the lad hasn’t fallen to his death - mother of the year she is not.

We learn this was the highlight of Walter’s upbringing and meet him again as a middle aged man with two less than doting parents. Dad has largely switched off and Mum is as harsh as ever - at least she’s generous with her toffees! Walter can talk a bit but is prone to anxiety attacks and is definitely a bit slow in virtually all departments - expect pigeon fancying.

He has a job in a warehouse; but it’s mostly charity and his fellow workers, including a young Keith Allen, are all cruel to him. Soon Dad is dead and it’s just Walter and Mum. They spend this quality time wailing and slapping and it’s no surprise when Mum pops her clogs too. Well it is to Walter who, rather than accept being alone, moves all his pigeons into Mum’s bedroom to keep her corpse happy.

Eventually social services catch wind, or probably the smell, of Mum’s demise and Walter is moved to a sanatorium. This environment is even worse than home and although he gets a bit of action on his first night from a rapist dwarf it’s downhill from there as bum wiping and patient murders are all he has too look forward too. Can we see some hope in Walter’s tale? or is the message that life is hell and you shouldn’t bother getting out of bed?

I must have seen this film 30 years ago and it was grimmer than I remember. It’s basically some poor sod going through hell for 70 minutes with a five second interlude of pigeon affection squeezed in to offer some respite.

McKellan is excellent as the troubled Walter but it’s such a desperate role that it is hard to empathise with the character. Sure you feel sorry for him but he offers nothing in the way of redemption and you can see why his unsupportive parents can’t wait to shift off the mortal coil. The message, if there is one, is nihilistic at best and at worst an exercise in thinking ‘thank God that’s not me’.

The director, Stephen Frears, certainly doesn’t hold back in the stark reality stakes and if there is a shittier bottom in movie history I’ve never seen it (thankfully). The cast, especially those in the latter scenes in the institution are a terrifying bunch given the environment they are placed. Rapes and slashings are prevalent among the inmates apart from the innocent Walter who tries to grin through it all with his buck teeth. Jim Broadbent shows up as an orderly and is possibly the only half decent person on show.

The film closes with a chat between Jim and Walter where the meaning of life is discussed but for the most part this is a depressing downward spiral that offers nothing apart from an excuse for more Prozac. Wikipedia tells me that a sequel was made but frankly I don’t think I could handle anymore - thank goodness then it doesn’t start with a ‘W’!

W Score 13/23
Best Bit - Dead Mum gets a bird shit makeover