No.159 : The Witch (2015)

The Witch at the IMDb

Some sources say the correct title for this film is ‘The Vvitch’ (with 2 Vs) but given my VV blog is still in it’s infancy we’ll settle for our own alphabet, thanks very much.

The film is subtitled ‘A New England folk tale’ but this isn’t one you’d want to hear around a camp fire or indeed around goats.

We open with Chris Finch (great rep.) being expelled from a township in 1620’s America. The rift is either over religion or the Swindon lot not taking to him; that much isn’t explained. The town council are all in puritan garb and it’s likely that Finchy has fallen foul of their dress code.

He and his wife and their four kids are herded out of the safety of the fenced village and are left to make their own way in the world. Things seems to start off OK, as we rejoin them a year or so later with a new born son, Samuel, and a sizeable farm holding next to a dark and foreboding forest. Like ‘The Village’ the forest is a no go area, but a failed harvest means that may have to change.

Finchy’s hand is forced when Samuel disappears after a game of ‘peek-a-boo’ with his eldest daughter Thomasin. The family plan to hunt for the child but we the viewer have already seen him spirited away and killed by a witch who uses the unbaptised infant’s blood for some mad ritual.

Things don’t get much better for the family as their corn rots, the goat’s milk turns bloody and their eggs are slightly off. Added to the mix is the loss of their dog, horse and son Caleb. Caleb and Thomasin tried to find some grub for the family but it ended badly when Caleb stumbled onto the Witch’s home. She looked lovely to begin with but as is often the case she became an old hag up close. Sadly Caleb was lured in as we’d seen him ogling his sister's chest previously, and the witch was very busty.

Caleb is returned to the family a day later, but naked and spewing up apples. It’s like that Ibiza holiday all over again. The family start to turn on each other - is there a witch in their midst? The accusations fly and home truths are revealed. Are they all as virtuous as they may have signalled? Can they survive this onslaught and will it be done before Chasers opens?

I liked this spooky and nihilistic tale of seemingly good people being pulled apart by supernatural forces. Basically they didn’t have a chance from the off with the Witch’s powers and the family’s blind faith making for a deadly mix.

It was a bit off putting at first that ye olde English was spoken throughout but you soon get to grips with it. Finchy and Kate Dickie as Mum and Dad were great as was Harvey Scrimshaw playing Caleb. I was less taken with Anya Taylor-Joy in the pivotal part of Thomasin, who was a bit too clean and pretty amidst all the plight. Maybe that’s your clue!

There were some genuinely disturbing scenes especially towards the end, when the family’s goat Black Phillip starts to make his move. There were a lot of images that will stay with you and some were the stuff of nightmares.

I’m not sure what we learned with this film but ‘stay out of the woods’ would seem like sage advice!

The Tag Line - Talk to Me! 78%

No.158 : The Visit (2015)

The Visit at the IMDb

‘Big Twist’ director M. Night Shyamalan is clearly trying to make the ‘V’ annex of the Definite Article blog his own with this, his second entry after the decently received The Village

His star dimmed following  his early promise but he has come back strongly with those James McAvoy superhero offerings, which I liked, and this effort which was a huge financial success despite never having invaded my consciousness.

To be fair it was a low key ‘found footage’ effort with a $5m budget, but it retains his twist signature and was an enjoyable offering.

The film opens with a couple of precocious kids getting ready to visit their grandparents whom they have never met. Their single Mum, Kathryn Hahn, fell out with them 15 years ago when she chose to marry an older man who was the kids’ father. He’s since left, but Mum’s divisions with the parents remain. They did however reach out and asked to meet the kids and they agreed to it. Mum was happy with the deal as it means she can go on holiday with her new fancy man.

The older child, Becca (Olivia Delonge) is about 15 and a keen documentary filmmaker. She insists on recording every moment on multiple cameras and this is the basis of the film. Prepare for lots of jerky but high quality footage. Her brother, Tyler, is about 10 and thinks he can rap, but he totally can’t. Mum sticks the kids on a train, with the grandparents meeting them at the other end for a week of fun and bonding. And terror!

We can guess things wont go well when blood red captions announce ‘Monday’ ‘Tuesday‘ etc., just like my pants. The grandparents seem fine at first but soon small quirks start to give the kids pause for thought. Things like Grandpa piling up shitty nappies and Grandma wandering about in the night puking up are written off as old people eccentricities. 

We get intermittent clues that things may not be what they seem, when visitors come looking for the grandparents when they aren’t around and their general phobia of being filmed. Mum makes regular webcam appearances and tries to settle the kids, but what is the mystery of the forbidden basement? What will the twist be? - because you can bet your ass there will be one!

The annoying children and the tired ‘found footage’ format encouraged me to dislike this film but I was won over by the creepy setting and the pacing which ratcheted up from ‘slow’ to ‘madcap’ in the last half hour.

The found footage angle is a bit misleading as you get a lot of angles and perfect focus on even the most frenetic scenes. I’m all for this as I came to be entertained, not convinced that the whole thing was shot on a single Sony Handycam.

The kids were decent, even the annoying boy, but the grandparents take the prize with some suitably mental behaviour. The pace was good and for a while I almost believed it would be a nice film about bonding before it all went to hell. The reveal wasn’t totally unexpected but it was well handled and there was a real sense of ‘Oh shit’ when the penny dropped.

The clues were peppered about so it worked as a twist as it wasn’t totally left field. On reflection it would be hard to see what else the twist could have been, so kudos to all concerned for blurring the lines enough to give at least a light ‘Wow’ moment.

There were some great creepy scenes especially with Grandma going all ‘Silent Hill’. Grandad was good too and some of his scenes were genuinely hands in front of face time - either that or you could earn a used nappy yourself!

A good fun ‘whatisit’ that will offer a few laughs and a few scares to even the most jaded movie fan.

The Tag Line - I hope that’s Nutella! 74%

No.157 : The Unborn (2009)

The Unborn at the IMDb

This 2009 shocker stars Gary Oldman and Odette Annable, whom we recently saw in ‘The Double’(the Richard Gere one). This film garners  her best ever marks in a Definitive Article Movie review but that’s damning her with the faintest of faint praise.

Before we start a word about that poster - fair enough she does appear in her pants but to make out that that’s a fair representation of the film is poor form. You’d get more titillation in an episode of ‘Last of the Summer Wine’.

We open with our heroine, Casey, out for a jog. She finds a glove in the street and when she looks back she sees a zombie child. When she double takes she sees a bulldog with a mask on. She then finds a buried baby whose eyes open before she wakes up - it was all a dream! So far, so dreadful.

Casey starts to experience issues in her real life, with her babysitting job ending up with a mirror being smashed in her face by a four year old and her omelette’s eggs being full of bugs. Is she possessed or is she just babysitting at Ferguslie Park and buying her eggs from the bargain counter?

She confides in her waste of space friend who tells her it’s bad luck to see your reflection before you are one year old. This comes true as the mirror smashing child had shone a mirror in a baby’s face and the infant died the next day. Is this a coincidence or is there more happening than we can accept? Obviously it’s the latter or it would be a short film.

Casey soon learns that she was one of a pair of twins with her sibling dying in the womb after strangling on her umbilical chord. She also dreams of her dead mother and meets a slightly loopy grandparent who tells her the family is cursed owing to events that took place in Auschwitz. After some suitably quick research she accepts that she is possessed by the ‘dibook’ and enlists the help of Gary Oldman’s Rabbi Sendack to sort out the issue. Oldman clearly hasn’t been booked for enough scenes so he subcontracts some of the work to Idris Elba’s priest and the scene is set for the exorcism.

Will the evil spirit be purged? Will Gary blowing his horn do the trick? and how many of the cast will get the milky eye treatment before the spirit can be extinguished?

I hadn’t heard of this film before and was surprised to see that it returned $75 million on a $15 million budget - it looked a lot cheaper than that! It looked like a TV movie that had some star names transplanted in, late in the day, to secure a bigger box office take.

It was OK and competently made but there are only so many jump scares you can take. Basically every time someone looked in a mirror or opened a door you expected to see a creepy kid and you were rarely disappointed. The possession aspect was covered in our recent offering ‘The Prophecy’ and it was the same here with the malevolent spirit jumping between hosts at will. There was some spiritual gubbins with Oldman shouting from some ancient script, but it was nothing you haven’t seen before.

The lead was poor and ran from one scene to the next blubbering and begging for help. Oldman and Elba had about ten minutes screen time between them with neither shining whatsoever. Oldman’s casual rabbi offered no gravitas at all and he looked like he was phoning it in . With the script he had, it’s hard to criticise him.

The effects were alright but basically amounted to a few bugs and a kid with white make up and zombie eyes. I wasn’t scared in the slightest and the concentration camp aspect made no sense at all.

The ending suggested a sequel may be in the offing but I have no interest in tracking one down. The film focused on twins and the idea of duality - for me this is a one and done, thanks very much.

THE Tag Line : Kill it at birth! 51%

No.156 : The Terminator (1984) (Watchalong)

The Terminator at the IMDb

We don’t often cover well known films here at the Definite Article blog but I recently saw ‘Terminator : Dark Fate’ and wondered how the original held up. Rather than go over the well worn plot let’s have a watch along and see what we remember and what we pick up with the benefit of hindsight.

The film opens with a desolate Los Angeles 2027. I remember being impressed with this as a 14 year old but now the HK’s (Hunter Killers) look jerky and on wires. It’s clearly model work with the advances of HD TV showing up the cheap effects for what they are. You do get the tank going over a load of skulls which looks pretty good, so good in fact that it’s used in every subsequent film.

Arnie appears in a flash and does some flashing of his own as his tight buns are on display for all to see. He meets up with some hoods including a young Bill Paxton (or is it Pullman?) who all get suitably beaten up and stripped of their tough guy clothes.

Elsewhere Michael Biehn appears with a thud in a scene later nicked by the ‘Mr Bean’ TV show. He has a harder time finding gear and ends up with some smelly tramp trousers that he wears throughout the film. He gets the girl too, so don’t knock the smelly strides.

We meet Sarah Connor who has a terrible moped and is an even worse waitress. She has a hot date lined up but this soon gets cancelled - It’s James Cameron on the ansafone! - so she heads out to the cinema to leave her brunette friend Ginger alone with her boyfriend. Say goodbye Ginger!

Arnie has been busy clearing up the other Sarah Connors and soon zeros in on ours. I liked the ‘Tech Noir’ night club with it’s futuristic vibe that looks so dated now. The revellers look like they are on a Duran Duran video shoot and it costs a massive $4.50 to get in. There are other, now failed, future nods throughout the film like a radio ad for Laser Discs - might be worth a few quid on eBay I guess.

Arnie tracks his quarry by way of the phone book - you’d think that coming back from 2027 he’d have Google Maps built in but I guess there was no wi-fi in 1984! There is a funny scene in a gun shop with Dick Miller rubbing his hands at Arnie’s massive list of purchases - sadly he only gets a bullet, and it’s one of his own. Arnie nearly gives himself away asking for a plasma rifle - do your research cyborg!

We get the now classic ‘if you want to live come with me’ line as Reece hooks up with Sarah and they start the chase with Arnie that lasts the rest of the film. The pacing is good and the 100 minutes flies along - probably because you are anticipating the next good bit having seen it 20 times before.

Reece eventually convinces Sarah that he’s a soldier from the future and that she’s the mother of the resistance leader. Wonder how many times that line has worked for seedy men in the years since? Reece and Sarah get it on and Reece reveals himself to be a boobs man. She’s told not to ask who her son’s father is but you’d have to be a house plant not to guess it’s Reece who’s doing the old ‘impregnate them then die to get out of child maintenance’ routine.

The two make up a pile of pipe bombs using some household ingredients. I wonder if that’s where the Unabomber got his recipes? It dates the film a bit when a bloodied guy in a trench coat can buy up a shop’s full supply of ammonia and moth balls and not have Homeland Security immediately on his ass.

Arnie shows up having mimicked Sarah’s mother - a trick we’ll see again and again in the franchise. I liked that the dog remembered to bark when Arnie left. Small things like this and Kyle having the bite make up on his hand in later scenes showed a good eye for detail.

The pipe bombs prove mostly rubbish as they just  explode in a big puff of smoke, but the climatic chase is well done and it was fun to see Arnie get flattened by a big truck after driving over a toy one himself near the start of the film.

Arnie gets exploded but comes back as a skeleton and then as a torso. His persistence is admirable but it’s not as great as the franchise’s which insists on making the same film over and over.

There were shortcomings here but it was made on the cheap and as an original offering it is the best of the bunch. ‘T2 : Judgement Day’ is better as a standalone film but it covers virtually the same plot points as this verbatim.

The Arnie model work looks really fake as do a lot of the miniature scenes - water and flames always give away the small scale. It’s hard to be harsh though as this set the template for every sci-film made since. ‘Terminator Dark Fate’ was decent but it was just another rehash of this.

The acting was OK apart from Arnie who was just himself. It did beg the question that if the Terminator can mimic any voice why has it got ‘Hard to understand Austrian’ as it’s default?

Still good stuff and well worth a re-re-visit.

THE Tag Line - You’ll Be Back (Again) 80%

No.155 : The Stuff (1985)

The Stuff at the IMDb

I remember seeing posters for ‘The Stuff’ when it was realised in 1985 and thinking it looked interesting. Sadly it was ‘R’ rated and I was too busy with ‘S.S. Experiment Camp’ and Cannibal Ferox. Simpler times when you are 14! I came across it again on a trawl through Amazon Prime and thought I’d give it a go. Sadly some films should remain as posters on the wall in the Muirhead Café’s video department for all time!

We encounter the titular stuff in the first moments of the film. A man, who couldn’t be mistaken for an actor, finds the white stuff bubbling through the snow and has a taste. He’s a brave man - this was the era of white dog shit remember! He deems it delicious as does his friend - before we know it everyone is tucking into to this tasty marvel and the ice cream industry is getting nervous.

They have tried to analyse the mysterious foodstuff with no success. They had also tried to bribe The Food & Drug Administration for some details but all those involved in its approval are now dead or on holiday. Their only option is to hire corporate spy Mo Rutherford to get the low down on the mysterious morsel. Mo, played by Michael Moriarty, is an annoying know it all with a slow drawl and cowboy boots. He gets results however and has soon recruited The Stuff’s head of marketing to his endeavour.

Meanwhile a young lad is waging his own campaign against the stuff. He saw it moving about on its own in the fridge and tries to stop anyone eating it. Sadly his acting school must have burnt down as no one believes him. That is until he joins up with Mo and Mo’s unfortunately named accomplice ‘Chocolate Chip Charlie’. Wouldn’t happen today, I can tell you.

The investigation takes a few predictable turns and we are treated to some dreadful model work, as a dog and then a man contort violently when the stuff exits their bodies, leaving empty husks behind. Soon the source of the stuff is located. Can it’s inexorable conquest of greedy people continue unabated? Or will that old ‘stolen uniform’ plan work as usual?

I enjoyed the start of ‘The Stuff’ but it soon ran out of puff and I was struggling to see it through to it’s predictable ending, where it may not all be over after all!

The themes of addiction, corporate greed and an exploding dog are well worn and were handled with all of the subtlety of a sledgehammer wrapped in another sledgehammer. The ultimate source and point of the stuff was never really explored - it was just there, it was exploited and it was bad for people. I’m sure it was a metaphor for something, as the white ooze became additive and then consumed people, but I was too busy eating my McFlurry to work it out.

There were a couple of minor star turns with Danny Aiello and Paul Sorvino off ‘Goodfellas’ hamming it up for no worthwhile purpose. I did like some of the special effects, including a reworking of the spinning room out of ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ but it was strange that these sat cheek by jowl with some absolutely risible effects that wouldn’t have made the cut of kids’ TV show ‘Knightmare’.

I could see how the film would be a cult classic as some of the dialogue and effects are just the thing that trendy post modernists would love to have a go at. Unlike me. I did see a few lifts taken by ‘The World’s End’ and there was a decent amount of invention for a budget that seemed to run out half way through.

There wasn’t enough development in the threat for me and it just seemed a straight forward outing of danger followed by a pat resolution. The film is barely 90 minutes but I had had enough of ‘The Stuff’ long before the credits rolled.

The Tag Line : Stuff This 56%

No.154 : The Rezort (2015)

The Rezort at the IMDb

Don’t worry spelling pedants, the title is correct. The ‘Z’ stands for ‘Zombie’ and there are plenty in this British survival horror.

The film opens with a large and annoying media dump. For some reason all the clips are overlaid with static and a lot of jerky cuts. I guess this is to make you uncomfortable and edgey, but for me it was just irritating. I was worried that the whole thing was going to be a ‘found footage’ affair but thankfully it changed to a conventional film after the title card.

We learn that it has been seven years since an epidemic that caused the dead to come alive and eat the living. So far, so very predictable. Despite the loss of 2 billion people the government deem it appropriate to leave one island off the coast of Africa full of the undead, so that the rich can enjoy holidays shooting them up. It seems a daft concept, but is there another plan afoot that would explain, if not exactly justify the risk?

We meet the usual cavalcade of misfits who go through the orientation before being allowed out into the island. This obviously allows the viewer to know what’s going on and to anticipate the pitfalls, which come on plenty and often.

Strangely for a resort that caters for rich asshole hunters none of our crew want to be there. We meet a single women who was dumped at the alter and is using the non-refundable ticket herself. We also get some team gamers who won a competition and a dull woman and her Irish boyfriend who have less life that most of the island’s inhabitants.

 The big star is the enigmatic Dougray Scott who may be mysterious or he may have forgotten his script. We’re not sure why he’s there (bad agent?) but he does have a bigger gun than everyone else so we know he’s to be taken seriously.

As is the law for any futuristic theme park things soon go awry with one visitor’s attempts to steal some files for a refugee agency causing a virus to infect the system and quickly close down all the security protocols. They do this from an underground bunker that was nicked wholesale from ‘Westworld’.

Strangely the manacles on the zombies are computer controlled and once these are off the undead go on a neck biting rampage. Still it’ll be OK - the island zombies or ‘shufflers’ have been there for seven years and are slow - only fresh ones can run about a bit. Wait, were are these speedy zombies coming from? Is there an even more nefarious scheme in place? As our diminishing band of heroes trek across the island to safety we wonder if the plot is as obvious as first flagged and will we all learn to care just a little bit before the inevitable conclusion?

This was a decent slice of hokum but it offered nothing new to an already overloaded genre. The attempts to layer in a bit of social commentary were heavy handed with the blue teddy bear taking the role of the red coat in ‘Schindler’s List’. Obviously it would be hard to mirror that film’s level of gravitas when you have a bunch of Z listers running about screaming as a never ending hoard of zombies jump out from every corner.

Having Scott carry the film was a mistake as he had no charisma at all. He wasn’t burdened with any backstory at all and, although tasty with his sniper rifle, he had little to do except lead the chase to the exit - a path no doubt mirrored by all unlucky enough to see this dud in the cinema.

There was the fun of seeing every other theme park and zombie film ever made homaged with ‘28 Weeks Later’ getting a few nods along with ‘Jurassic Park’ and ‘Westworld’ - film and TV versions.

It was competently made but I had zero interest in any of the dull characters - apart from ‘Marty’ off ’Lead Balloon’ - wondered what he’d been up to!

The ending was clearly meant to make us think and revalue our own morals, but frankly when you set your film in a zombie theme park you are asking a lot of your audience if you want anything more than the odd grunt and lack of dribble.

Risible nonsense with a moral high ground that hardly befits the brain dead premise. ‘eat brainnsss?’ need to have one first!

The TAG Line -  World War Zzzzzzzz  45%

No.153 : The Quiet (2005)

The Quiet at the IMDb

Sitting with a hangover ‘The Quiet’ seemed like a good choice. The film has some pretty dark themes but at least it has no loud noises or explosions.

We open with a bit of duff narration from Dot who is a deaf mute. We wonder from the off if she really is because she’s doing the voiceover! She talks about being half a person when another is there and a third when two people are there. This lessons in fractions was reminiscent of Steve Martin discussing how time felt in ‘The Jerk’.

Dot is an orphan whose Mum died when she was seven, and her deaf father recently when he lost an argument with a truck. She moves in with the dysfunctional Deer family who are her Godparents. Their bitchy cheerleader daughter, Nina (A slightly too old Elisha Cuthbert), isn’t happy with the new resident and badmouths her in front of her parents, safe in the knowledge that she can’t hear.

The parents have their own issues with Mrs Soprano maintaining the drug habit she earned on ‘Nurse Jackie’ and the Dad being a bit too keen on his daughter. At school the Nina and her friend Michelle are the stereotypical high school bitches whilst Dot is left on her own. She does however catch the eye of troubled jock Connor, who fancies Dot more than Michelle who is frankly laying it on a plate for him.

In the background of this typical high school affair is the spectre of abuse as Dad visits Nina’s room most nights whilst Mum pretends that she can’t hear anything going on.

Obviously everyone has issues and is basically mental - who’s nuttiness will ratchet up first? Who’s for the chop and will Dot’s voice be heard?

I quite enjoyed this film although it wasn’t too substantial and made even less sense.

Nina is 17 and the frankly creepy Dad is well overdue a pounding and not in a good way. Nina plots his demise but gets her head turned by a new bag. There is also a subplot of her bitchy friend making lesbian advances towards her as they sleep over in baby doll nightdresses. Not sure what was being conveyed here but a rewatch is already in the plans!

Camilla Belle had a tough job as Dot as she wasn’t exactly engaging and she just smiled and looked blank a lot. I get that she had regressed into herself as a defence mechanism but I wasn’t buying her deaf mute routine. At no time in the last twenty years had she never stood on a nail or let out a yell when a late goal busted her coupon?

The high school romances, complete with the prom, were well worn paths, but I am a sucker for the popular kids being right cows. The troubled jock Connor was a bit of a pain and I don’t know why his seduction technique was to talk about how often he jerked off. Worked though!

The inevitable finale was signalled from way off and the big reveal was nothing of the kind. Still they all healed a bit (apart from Dad!) and learned that the quiet after the storm was the best bit.

All in all a decent, if uneven, effort that had some worthwhile ideas which weren’t fully realised.

The Tag Line : Tony’s wife asks if she’s fat   65%

No.152 : The Prophecy (1995)

The Prophecy at the IMDb

Here we go with another one off look at a franchise - there are five ‘The Prophecy’ films to pick from, but for us, it’s a one and done. This series starts off reasonably high rent with a decent cast but it soon loses its lustre and heads into the ‘video premiere’ twilight zone.

This is the first of the franchise and it’s decent 1990’s fun with lots of big hair and puffy shirts. We open with someone looking forlorn over the remains of what appears to be an angel…

No, not that one - a real one! There is a portentous and pretentious voice over by Eric Stoltz who waffles on about an never ending war in heaven. After the credits we meet Thomas who is being ordained as a priest. As the ceremony goes on he suffers horrible visions - no not of choir boy abuse but of lots of angels killing each other. He quite correctly freaks out and when we catch up with him again he’s become a hard bitten police detective. That’s some career office they have right there.

We meet Stoltz and learn that he is the ginger angel Simon. He gets into a big fight with another angel (they all look like people, no wings or anything) and bests him when his opponent gets smashed into a wall by  a car. Our hero is called into investigate the death and gets top coroner Kenny Banya to do the autopsy. He’s the best Jerry, the best! Banya finds the body has both sets of sex organs and the oldest bible in existence. With such an important discovery they decide to lock him up in the meat locker for the night and head home.

There’s no rest for the dead however when Christopher Walken shows up to have a lick of the body before incinerating it. Maybe the corpse laughed at his bad dye job, it’s not clear. After lots of painful exposition we learn that there is a soul out there that both sides in the angel war want. Stoltz has it, but he manages to transfer it to a little native American girl by way of a frankly creepy big kiss. The girl is looked after by Virginia Madsen who has nicked the remains of Walken’s black hair dye.

She and the failed priest must now join forces to save the little girl from the converging forces in the angel war - who’s your money on? Gabriel or Lucifer? FIGHT!

This was a lot of nonsense but it was enjoyable nonsense with some decent action and a few good turns. One of these was not Viggo Mortensen who shows up as Lucifer near the end and overacts like hell, sorry heaven.

The exposition is poor with the angels all fighting over God’s love, as God now loves humans the most and whom the angels refer to as ‘monkeys’ - bit racist.

Walken plays it pretty straight and intense and is good value. I liked his habit of perching on things like a big vulture. His dialogue, and that of everyone else, was shocking with lines like "Two hells is one too many” being trotted out with a straight faces along with the Yoda worthy “War  leads to arrogance and that leads to evil which leads to me”.

There were a lot of B list stars popping up including Amanda Plummer as Walken’s replacement zombie - he needs a helper as he can’t drive - probably shouldn’t have given up the wings Chris! And Eric Stoltz who had the good taste to bow out before the halfway mark.

The poor Native Americans came out of it badly portrayed as always as a bunch of hicks living in trailers but with a mystic sixth senses. This translated to them just chanting and waving sticks for much of the film.

The big denouement was poorly handled although I would like to see how they manage to get a sequel with Walken still in the lead - not enough to seek it out though!

If you want a bit of mindless pap with cod philosophy, religious posturing and blouses tied at the waist this would be the film for you.

THE Tag Line : No Angel delight 57%

No.151 : The Outsider (2018)

The Outsider at the IMDb

The regular reader of this blog will remember that we have twice before visited the genre of ‘round eye in Japan’ in The Challenge and The Yakuza. Both these films were decent with the usual cultural differences played out to give a bit of drama as well as stuff being chopped off.

This entry in to the increasingly busy genre stars Jared Leto as the only non-Japanese in an Osaka prison. We don’t know his back-story but he has a bushy beard so it may be something to do with razor blades. He has a lowly job in the prison and has to defer to the Yakuza gangster inmates who are identifiable by their extensive tattoos.

Leto’s character ‘Nick’ saves one man from a hanging and later assists in an escape attempt when he helpfully calls the guards when his cell mate slices open his belly. The local Yakuza clan thank Nick for his efforts and get him out of jail. They also give him a job, but not one with many prospects as it involves braining an unhelpful American factory owner with a typewriter.

His new bosses are impressed and soon Leto has a suit and a tattoo of his own. His clan aren’t the strongest however, with some rivals trying to muscle in on their territory. Nick stops one incursion but has to give up two fingers when his ageing boss send over the digits as an apology rather than risk a war. That’ll be the end of his fledgling ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ career.

Nick’s family’s troubles suggest there is a rat in the camp and when it’s revealed to be his boss there is no surprise whatsoever. This nasty piece of work also makes moves on Nick’s girlfriend who is pregnant and is also involved in a big pow-wow at the docks which was a bad plan from the off. Elsewhere Nick’s back story is touched upon when he bumps into an old army colleague who suggests Nick’s appearance is a surprise and may be of interest to the military. I wouldn’t be taking any invites home if I was that guy!

With a big showdown looming who can we trust and will Nick manage to win the respect of a frankly odious bunch of gangsters?

This film started out well but lost it’s way, with the ending being a right load of old cobblers. The main failing was the character of Nick himself. It’s thinly written with no backstory at all. This starts off OK with Nick being all intense and mysterious but later on, with nothing revealed, you can be forgiven for wondering ‘Why should I care?’. We don’t know why Nick is in jail , looking like the ghost of David Bellamy, and we don’t know why he’s attracted to the Yakuza - maybe it’s the suits and the staring.

Although a Netflix film, the production is lavish with post war Japan brilliantly realised. There are plenty of gory slayings and some brutal finger choppings, none of which I could watch. Even the ‘thunk’ as the blade slices through - urrgh!

It’s not clear what the girl sees in Nick who is clearly certifiable. The Yakuza all seem quite welcoming too apart from the usual ‘white dog’ insults. Maybe they just see him as someone not scared of doing the dirty work.

I don’t think I learned anything here and the entertainment value was negligible. None of the characters engaged with me and for all his starey silences Nick just came across as a rudderless psycho with the charisma of a stale won-ton. The Japanese henchmen were mostly subtitled apart from when they tried a bit of English, but you wished those bits had been subtitled too.

You get all the usual gubblins about honour, but of course they are all stabbing each other in the back, or slicing the throat to be more exact, every chance they get.

The film is nice to look at but a strong win for style over substance.

The Tag Line : I’ll just slice that for you…

55%

No.150 : The Natural (1984)

The Natural at the IMDb

I always enjoy a good sports film but I’d never seen ‘The Natural’ before. Maybe the long run time of 137 minutes put me off or maybe the whole thing looked a bit too wholesome for my slightly seedier tastes. Well, now that I have seen it I can say it’s well worth a look and, although not the best baseball film I’ve seen (Major League 3 : Back to the Minors, seeing as you ask) it’s still pretty good.

We open with a young lad playing ball with his Dad - an idyllic scene right up to the point Pop has a heart attacked and snuffs it and then a tree gets hit by lightning for good measure. The lad is Roy Hobbs and when fate gives him an exploded tree he makes a baseball bat out of it. He calls the bat ‘Wonderboy’ just like Homer Simpson’s ‘Wonder bat’ - in fact most of the baseball Simpsons episode pays homage to this film, so that’s a blind spot in my education erased.

We jump forward a few years and the young lad has become Robert Redford. That’s one tough paper round he had! Redford was 38 when he made this, and there is no effort to explain why a 38 year old is playing a teenager. I thought I’d stick with it an all would be revealed - an old man’s fantasy maybe? No, they just didn’t have ‘The Irishman’ style de-ageing then, so just go with it.

Roy gets a call up to the Chicago Cubs and says goodbye to his equally middle-aged, but playing it  young, girlfriend Glenn Close. Roy gets on the train to Chicago and meets sports hack Robert Duvall and ‘The Whammer’ a Babe Ruth type baseball legend. The journalist sets up a bet that Roy can strike out The Whammer which he does, and in turn attracts the attentions of psycho groupie, Barbara Hershey. Barbara takes him back to hers but shoots him in the guts for his trouble. Not what he expected when she agreed to fire into him!

16 years pass and we meet the same Robert Redford whom everyone is now calling ‘Granddad’. He has been signed up by the New York Knights, the worst team in baseball. The manager doesn’t fancy Redford and keeps him on the bench, but a couple of strokes of luck, and a bad bay for Mr Blonde, see him in the team. Roy is a smash hit until he meets floozy Kim Basinger, the squeeze of the local bookie. Soon Roy is facing bribes and a slump in form. Will an old flame reignite the magic and will an old would prevent Roy from winning the pennant and saving the club?

You could probably delve into the subtext of this film and come up with an allegory for the corruption of the American Dream. I didn’t bother and enjoyed the tale of a man striving to win against the odds for what it was. There was a lot of nostalgia flying about with the games and crowds all wonderfully realised by director Barry Levinson.

The turning points of Roy’s life all involved the dames and I think the message is that you’d do better if you kept your pecker in your pocket. The villains such as the bookie and wannabe club owner, The Judge, were all a bit boo hiss and I wondered why they didn’t just bump Roy off rather than try to turn his head.

Some of Roy’s hits were great such as one where the ball is knocked out of it’s cover and others that destroyed clocks and stadium lights. It was well done and you’d be a cold individual not to get the chills when Roy faces the last pitch 2-0 down with two outs and two men on. To be honest I wasn’t sure he was going to win when a young version of himself was the new pitcher - would the story continue with the new ‘natural’? Nah, but it was a nice thought.

I was surprised that the film did as well as it did in awards season as I thought it was a bit slight, but like ‘Field of Dreams’ I think it would speak to Americans about better, more innocent times when you could meet women on trains and be shot by them!

Redford was good, but it was a mistake not to have any attempt at him looking any younger in his adolescent scenes - at one point I’m sure the conductor was going to give him senior citizen discount! The film more than makes up with that one conceit with an excellent cast and a finely realised world.

THE Tag Line :  Whammy!  79%