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.148 : The Laundromat (2019)

The Laundromat at the IMDb

This is bound to be good; Steve Soderbergh directing Meryl Streep in a film about losing socks and using the wrong type of fabric conditioner.

What? It’s a metaphor for the financial system? Well, OK then.

The film starts with Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas giving us a pretty patronising lecture about the nature of money. This is well done as they wander past cave men and end up in a fancy nightclub. It’s not clear who there are or why they are adopting funny accents but more will be revealed.

The film proper opens with Meryl and her husband James Cromwell going on a nice lake cruise, but things go quickly awry when the boat sinks leaving James at the bottom. Guess they shouldn’t have had the T1000 Terminator run the excursion! Meryl isn’t after the money but she’s shocked when she finds the insurance, which had been arranged by Ross off of ‘Friends’ wasn’t valid. There followed a seemingly dull section about reinsurance, but I quite enjoyed it as that’s my line.

The film is divided into various sections with cool graphics and title cards, and we follow where the insurance premium went and how the system is totally corrupt. Meryl gets a small settlement and advice to take a holiday. She does, but only to Nevis where the shell company who provided the reinsurance is based. She runs into the company owner, Jeffrey Wright, who is too busy working on his terrible Jamaican accent to give her any time. Meryl was wanting to buy a flat in Vegas off Sharon Stone but can’t because of a lack of cash and due to Russians gazumping her with a massive cash bid.

We start to delve deeper into the shady world of shell companies and meet Gary and Antonio in their real form as corrupt bankers. They run thousands of paper companies which have their secretaries as signatories and who have zero ethics or responsibilities. When one secretary dies of a consequence of a dodgy road begat of a corrupt financing scheme another steps into her shoes - this one looks and sounds a bit familiar though? Actually she looks like the Bo’ Selecta version of Lorraine Kelly, but I’m sure it’s just an unusual looking actress.

A further layer of the corrupt world plays out with an African bribe merchant who is having family troubles, owing to him getting friendly with the daughter’s room mate. Surely nothing will bring down this elaborate web of financial dubiety?

I only watched this Netflix film as it started with an ‘L’ but I was glad I went in unaware of its pedigree and subject matter. It was good fun to see a lot of familiar faces albeit in smaller roles that demanded funny accents. It was only after about 70 minutes that the penny dropped and I realised the ‘based on actual secrets’ opening caption may actually have been true for once.

The production was slick from the exotic locations, stellar cast and funky graphics. It covered a lot of similar ground to ‘The Big Short’ but was far more interesting than that. Streep was the back bone of the film and came across well as the swindled widow. Maybe less good in a second role however.

The only problem for me was the preachy end piece with Streep giving an impassioned plea for change. All very good but if I wanted politicking I’d watch panorama!

The film wasn’t scared to break the fourth wall with Oldman and Banderas wandering in and out of scene to explain stuff and show their shady influence. I also liked them breaking the fourth wall to reveal that director Soderbergh had five companies of his own. This kind of undermined the premise of the film as those involved are no doubt in the 1% paying the very least amount of tax that they can get away with.

It was however entertaining and revealing and well worth a look.

THE Tag Line : What’s in Your Wallet? 75%