Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

                       

So on to the fifth one, and Harry et al are making new friends and enemies, and trying to convince the Ministry of Magic that Voldemort is back. I enjoy the return of all the guys from the older generation, and there are some good new cast additions again (I'm mostly thinking Loony and that evil witch lady for this instalment, but good casting choices are a strength for this series in general).

There was some fantastic acting in this one by Radcliffe, and this film is a great way for him to show his range (with the whole fighting the darker elements of himself/Voldemort's influence, and all the emotional dialogue heavy scenes in this one). I loved his back and forths with Gary Oldman in particular.

I remember really enjoying the Dumbledore's Army subplot when reading the book, and I'm glad that they included it in the film. Honestly the resistance against Umbridge was more enjoyable than the Voldemort drams, if not as consequential overall, just because of how fun and light hearted it was (I mean apart from the whole torture thing, which I remember being difficult to watch when I first saw it in theatres). Nevil's character felt a little undercooked though, and it would have been nice to have found some way to include the scene with his parents in the mental hospital somehow (because Matthew Lewis fast becoming a great actor too at this point).

The atmosphere continues with its mainly dark tones, and I really liked the sound design and score throughout, culminating in some great atmosphere building in the final act.
             

                   

The battle in the balls room and around the creepy arch was cool, and the death of Sirius was effectively emotional, but suddenly all the adult witches and wizards are flying around in clouds of black or white - what's that about? I thought they needed brooms for that, but I guess now they're the Harry potter equivalent of black or white cowboy hats. The fight between Dumbledore and Voldemort at the end was pretty epic, and I loved the creative use of materials (I was getting a sort of 'Avatar' vibe off of the use of shards of glass, broken down into sand, rebutted with a burst of fire, etc.) though the conclusion felt a little limp.

                    

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: 50.3

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

                

So if you haven't realised yet that as Harry grows up his films are getting increasingly dark, this one aughtta drive that point home. We've moved from the teen to the young adult section, as far as I'm concerned, and I remember being slightly shocked at first viewing when I was like 10 (I mean I had read it earlier - well, one of my parents read it to me - but I guess the memory had dulled by then or something).

               

                

We get lots more dark imagery, with the whole KKK looking Death Eater thing at the start, the rebirth of Voldemort, and that posh kid dying (I didn't really like him anyway, I think my largest prejudice is against well off strong looking blond farmery types, I got a similar vibe off that guy Pita from 'The Hunger Games').

The whole tournament thing creates some cool spectacles, but come on it was totally shoehorned in. It feeling like Rowling was just getting bored about writing about school stuff this year and felt like mixing it up. I mean, surely they'd have at least mentioned it in previous books? Like in year three surely someone would have said something like “can't wait for the tournament next year” or something to that effect? Whatever, the dragon fight was cool (wish we got to see some of the other ones) and the underwater thing was alright (I know a guy who worked on some of the effects for that). I liked the maze way more in the book - I seem to remember it being filled with monsters. Being filled with nightmares or whatever is cool too though, I guess. I really liked the graveyard scene, it was an effective all is lost moment, and Voldemort is cool in his new form.

The sort of secondary climax after this scene felt a little tacked on and messed with the pacing a bit. I don't like that Mad Eye turns out to be Tennant the whole time. I mean I liked his character (and both Gleeson and Tennant do fantastically) only o find that I never really knew him. Kind of stops me feeling that attached to him when he shows up in later movies, really.

Overall though an engaging and welcomingly dark 'Harry Potter' film with a slight shift in genre from it being mystery based to more thriller based. From here to the last film in the series the tone has pretty much been set, now. Dark dark dark.

               

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: 47.9

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

                   
The third film is, in my own experience, the most divisive among fans. Personally I enjoyed it, but many aren't as into the stark tonal shift from the more jolly first two into the darker third film (a trend that will continue), the mixed up narrative, and the lack of Voldemort. As I see it, there are two main reasons for this. First, it was at this pint that I think Rowing really started planning the details of her series, and found that he couldn't just have Voldemort coming back once a book to e defeated repeatedly by the Harry gang. She also probably realised that more characters and back story was needed to create heroes and villains with depth in future instalments (I'm not saying she's a bad writer, just a rather simplistic young-adult focused one). Secondly, the actor playing Dumbledore had died, and the director of the previous films left the project. The instalment of Michael Gambon and Alfonso Cuarón changes the feeling of this film, especially since Cuarón chose to go with some different stylistic choices (sweeping shots, artistic close ups, stylised cuts - elements that I might dismissively call “better”, but that in reality are dependent on the genre and tone of the film overall). There were lots of long uncut moving shots, which were well executed and set the school environment scenes well. The lighting an editing are also improved, with more subtle differences in scenes that better reflect intended tone. A beautiful example is when they're on the train early on, and the Dementor floats down the hall, and we see the light get cool and dim as we see it through the rapidly frosting glass while hearing the soft chink and crunch of freezing and a soft inhaled breath.
                

               
I definitely prefer the appearance of the Dementors in this one to later films.

Some of the comedy didn't really work for me in this one, or still felt kind of awkward (the second movie was certainly more fun). I didn't like the tonal shift from the foreboding dog scene to Harry getting on to the Night Bus. It suddenly turns into comedic slapstick, and while the driver, his shrunken head friend and the ticket boy are nice characters, they're a little over the top and embarrassing.

Not too many complaints for this one though. Things have moved around slightly and the sets are finalised for the last five films, and the wardrobe has gotten a little more realistic (the kids now more often wear their uniforms in their own ways, and all their ties are tied terribly - reminds me of m own Secondary). This and greatly improved acing on the part of the kids (and an excellent adult cast - Gary Oldman in particular) makes the whole environment feel more like a real place.
The actual plot? Fine, I guess. They did a sort of weird time travel thing, which wasn't particularly original or fitting with the wizarding world, but was of a good level of complexity for the target audience (this or 'Back to the Future' can be their introduction, then they can move on to the more difficult 'Time Crimes' and finally 'Memento'). The main new thing I liked was the whole Phoenix gang generation, and I'd like there to be a series about them (though with different, younger, actors portraying them I might not enjoy their characters as much).

                

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: 49.8

Infini

                  

'Infini' is a low budget Australian sci-fi horror that combines elements of 'Blade Runner', 'The Thing', 'Alien' and even 'The Shining' in quite a pleasing way, but fails to be wholly entertaining or memorable.
Starting with some explanatory text, we find that the Earth is overpopulated and lots of people are forced into working for security forces that sort of teleport them to distant outposts to fix them or rescue people or whatever. There's a big catastrophe, and a squad is sent to the furthest outpost from Earth where they find that the frozen shit has  very much hit the space fan. It sports a wilfully unorganised narrative, which I think many viewers will find unpleasantly jarring, but I kind of enjoyed the lack of structure, reminiscent of the infected people's state of mind. Every character is infected fairly early on, pretty much removing any hope. Watching their actions I gradually lost my sense of rooting for one character over another as they were all mentally unstable, and the main reason for viewing became physiological study and morbid curiosity.

                      

                        
I enjoyed the tone though, and it was  a good looking movie (the sets really suited, very industrial and 'Alien'-esque). Their take on zombies were cool too, I found the self mutilation and taunting scarier than classic zombies (possibly because I'm just so used to regular zombies, but I did like the psychological element here for sure).
While most of the characters weren't thoroughly explored, they didn't broadcast their simplicity to me either. Their throwaway dialogue wasn't trying too hard to present one as the funny one, one as the bad ass, the coward, the leader, etc.
I don't want to make it seem like this film is perfect, though. The condition is quite simplistic (at least at first) - it's basically just played out as the sane part of the infected person fighting to control a growing desire for mindless violence - but I liked the concept. There's some sloppy editing too (I'm thinking the repetition of the final speech and the flash forward at the start here in particular), and this is where the low budget shows most, but overall they did a good job of it and the acting was solid and really carried the film.
It gets increasingly introspective towards the end, which is nice. I didn't really connect to the whole family love win out out over base desires thing, but it's a nice message I guess. The final twist of them being replicated completely and finishing the mission to return the Earth was fan-freaking-tastic. The best part is that they all seem to be at least partly aware that they've changed somehow, and that they could be taking whatever change happened to them back to Earth, but they just want to be home safe with their families and not dead after all, and we don't even know how much of them are really human. The threat wasn't the bomb, it was them all along. They are the payload, because selfishness wins out against both love and hate.
I mean it's left a little more open than that - maybe the alien life form was finally taught empathy, reconstructed the humans, and sent them on their way - but that's not how I interpreted it.

                

Infini: 50.9

Kill Command

            

we're into familiar territory here with washed out colours and futuristic marines lacking in depth of personality (there's the leader, the nice one, the creepy one, and the one that gets scared and tries to run away). Some time in the near future a squad is sent out on a training exercise with a mysterious cyborg woman who's along to evaluate their performance and fuck around with their guns, or something. The problem here is that while we start off following her, her motivations for the majority of the film are foggy, and none of the secondary characters are really interesting enough to take over and become primary protagonists. It almost feels like we needed another character to be new to both the soldiering side and the tech person side of this world, for the viewer to really connect with. We have our colonial marines and we have our Bishop, but we don't have a Ripley. The one soldier that I did find half-way likeable actually dies before the first hour is over.

             

              
They get flown out to a remote training facility, but find that all the machines there have turned on their creators. Not particularly original, but it provides a limited mystery to drive the plot and keeps the action flowing. The design of the machines is pretty cool and feel like a natural evolution from where they are now (though honestly most of the robots seem about 20 years in the future while crazy cyborg lady is more like 100). The effects are fine too, and some of the battles are enjoyable and create tension. Their limitations aren't layed out to us at all though, the viewer doesn't fully understand the amount of control the leader robot has over the others for a good while, and it isn't until the final battle that we're told (in one of several chunks of awkward exposition from cyborg woman) that if they kill the leader robot the others all die too, or turn off, or something. The EMP comes out of nowhere too, and what about all those other leader bots in stasis? don't they all share information? So why not just wake up more than two others?

         
Not a total waste of time, but little more than a visually pleasing thoughtless sci-fi action romp. The kind of film I struggle to watch while doing anything else, but not the kind of film I'll likely remember in 6 months.

          

Kill Command: 36.3

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

                     

I have an odd, slightly sarcastic fondness for this one. There's a lot more smart visual humour in the scenes, the dialogue is faster and flows more naturally, and the acting is better (though could still use work). The villain is an interesting one, and I could have done with another scene or two of Harry talking to him through the book to get a better sense of Tom's character.
It's still essentially a mystery thriller, and said mystery is slightly less simplistic this time. My mother read the whole book to me in our back garden on a sunny summer day (testament both to her patience and the length of the book), so I guess I associate it with good times? I like many elements of this one too though - the spiders, the snake, and Lockhart is one of my favourite characters of the series.
              

             
We're starting to get a sense of some wider conspiracy now, with the similarities between Harry and Voldemort and whatnot, but I don't get the sense that Rowling had thought up the end game until some time around the fourth or fifth instalment. The world feels bigger though, and we're seeing the first steps into a narrative outside of Harry's present life at the school with the whole thing about Riddle and Hagrid in the past. The third film goes far more into a past that I think is one of my favourite aspects of this universe, but we'll have to wait for that.

Though the trio is improving, their acting still needs work. This film retains many of the clunky elements and acting problems of the first one. I remember when I was younger being irritated that they don't really mention the house cup and point system after going into so much detail on it before, but then I guess by this age the main cast will pretty much understand that it's a bullshit system, and these films are shot primarily from their point of view.

           

             
The fight at the end was great (save some awkward basilisk effect integration), I remember being appalled when the phoenix plucks the eyes from the snake and feeling scared for Harry when it was trying to hear him. None of it really made an impact on my re-watch though, so I'm mostly working from memory here (and for most of the series).

                  

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: 47.5

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

                   

Welcome to the magical world of clunky exposition and wooden acting! 'Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone' (changed to "Sorcerer's" in America 'cause they donno de big words) opens up the series, but (mostly thanks to bad writing and a young target audience) keeps something of a muzzle on the wizardly universe. I like my fantasy immediately expansive and initially confusing, I want to be thrown into the strange to forge my own sense of normality, but maybe that's just me.

There are a lot of 'Harry Potter' films, and though I am fond of them I'm not enamoured, so some of these won't be too long. This first one is a pretty faithful rendition of the book, with few scenes being omitted (mostly due to the size of the first novel, though also thanks to the film not really knowing what it is yet). We're watching a little deer get unsteadily to it's feet here.

              

                   

The child actors are all pretty terrible, but they sure are emoting, so there's that. Their plight isn't helped by the often silly or awkward dialogue, which results in the odd strained scene. The designs are great though (I'm mostly thinking architecture - it improves as the movies go along, the layout of the school in particular changing quite radically for the third one, but the style is all there already, and the sets come out of the book well) and despite some of the scenes playing solely for laughs now (his adopted family and the Hagrid interactions especially) it's still a fun little magical mystery.

              

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: 36.6

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

                           

Rowling needs more money?! 

                       

Skip past this first paragraph if you dont want to read the clichéd “reviewer rambles about a personal experience that loosely ties into the subject” portion - soz, couldn't help myself:

The fifth 'Harry Potter' book was the first I've ever read to myself. Before then, one of my parents read them all to me. My mum read the whole of 'Chamber of Secrets' to me in one day, sitting in the back garden. I really liked them as a kid, they were engaging and fairly easy to follow without being patronising. 'Order of the Phoenix' came out in 2003, when I was seven. At the time of writing, I'm twenty one. I'm not sure if I could be considered wholly adult (I'm writing this from a makeshift bed made of a stack of patio cushions with a sheet on top, in a nook of a spare room of a friend's house, where they keep the board games, shoes, camping supplies, and bike equipment), but recently I dipped into 'Order of the Phoenix' again just to see how it reads after all this time and, well, fourteen years of other books has changed my tastes. It seems bland and simply written to me now. There are lots of adjectives and the dialogue felt simple and clumsy. It's almost as if it was written for kids.

This film feels just like that. I don't think the target audience has changed, though the individuals have (not counting the fanatical fan base of the series, which is comparable in intensity to the 'Star Wars' and Tolkein ones, maybe even Trekkies). It was cute and fun, and they tied in the Americans and the historical setting in well with the universe, but it was for kids.

                

                 

The story was pretty simple, and was really just a setup for later films. The main focus was on the novelty of the creatures and in the exploration of this new facet of the wizarding world. I'm not sure I like the idea of wizards living in the Americas - I always thought of them more as old worlders, and I'd rather have been a film set in wizarding East Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa, but I guess that's too inaccessible for the American market.

The way they ended up having it was fine though. It feels like they might have the wizard relationship with the muggels reflect the burgeoning civil rights movement of later years. I think that would probably feel a bit heavy handed, but it could work.

I enjoyed the characters and plot, though it was all rather too peppy to really be my thing. It's a bit too busy, both in number of sub-plots and in animated assets in the frame (think 'Star Wars' prequels). I'm not in love, but it was a decent revival.

                     

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: 52.3

Screamers

                 

An unoriginal B style low budget sci-fi that's occasionally fun. We know what we're in for with 'Screamers' when it opens with the classic explanatory text crawl. It feels like it was made at least ten years too late - I think this movie belongs in the 80's with a smaller budget and a larger quantity of tongue in cheek. 

It has a slightly overcomplicated background, but basically the Earth has collonies all over the place, and one of them is on some planet with a precious fuel in the ground. When you mine it radiation or something comes out, so they refused to, so a big war started between the inhabitants of that planet and the corporation that owns the mines. The corporation bombs the guys on the planet and the guys on the planet make these tunnelling robots to kill people, who end up improving themselves to the point of looking like people.

               

                     

There's lots of other background information, most of which is given to us via the long exposition dialogue chunks dispersed throughout, but that's already more than you need to know. All you really need to know is that there are evil replicants everywhere. A green marine acts as an audience surrogate, and with his arrival comes awhole lot of extra information that I felt was basically unnecessary. It was at this point that I started to see how odd the pacing of this movie was. It both starts and ends haltingly, in several steps with stretches of filler in between. As it ends we get a lot of false final showdowns, but at that point it felt unintentionally awkward rather than an intended surprise.

The dialogue is terribly cheesy and the characters are simplistic, but it was a fun story and I liked the design of the bare robots (there was one short scene of a stop motion one that I thought was fantastic, but sadly they only used it once). There are no big twists, other than the realisation that random people are robots. I found the kid mildly creepy though (the phrase “can I come with you?” quickly becomes disturbing), and I enjoyed the scene when they were burning and shooting a horde of them.

                     

Screamers: 35.9

The Visit

                        

I think I'll put this down as a comedy...? There were a lot of jokes right after creepy shit anyway. Tonally it was all over the place. Two kids go visit their estranged grandparents who act weird, and then it turns out they were crazy people impersonating their grandparents. Oh, sorry; spoilers. You should have known it was going to be some twist like that though, being a Shyamalan flick. I was surprised they didn't turn out to be ghosts, or aliens, or possessed, or something. Crazy is tame, really. 

It's pretty slow, then it gets crazy at the end, then there's a weirdly jarring scene with the mum telling us what the movie was apparently about, and then there was a horrible bit of rapping. Hopefully you have already left the cinema at that point.
              

                

The kids were annoying. The girl's film making pretensions annoyed me (though who am I to talk?) and the boy's rapping annoyed me even more. At least they tried to give them a little character though, despite it feeling kind of false. 

The style is also odd. It's found footage, and occasionally it's edited like she's finished her documentary, but a lot of the time it's just random badly centred shots of nonsense. It feels lazy, but a lot of supposedly found footage films are now taking the lazy route, so whatever. 

The whole film made me feel uncomfortable, but not in a scared way, more in a watching 'The Office' kind of a way. I cringe at the kids being embarrassing or the old people making up excuses for weird shit more than anything else. It just wasn't scary, though: a major problem for a horror. I just can't manage to find crazy old people scary. In the film they're evenly matched because it's kids versus old people, but it's not something I can apply to real life. Just push them down the stairs already, jeez.

It's the kind of silliness you can leave on in the background while you, say, finish your review of 'Poltergeist' though, so that's good.

                           

The Visit: 27.9

Oblivion

                  

'Oblivion' is a good looking, high budget sci-fi that is nonetheless a dull rehash of countless tropes.

          

            

I like the pace. It took its time to set the scene and didn't rely on continuous action. Tom Cruise obviously has a lot of name recognition, but other than that I think he brought very little to the movie. I don't have strong feelings either way for Cruise; he's usually quite good at choosing roles that he works in, but he's a bit bland in this. He's in plenty of great films, but I don't love them for him, if you know what I mean. The characters are all pretty boring, actually, but they're all meant to be either brain washed clones or bunker-bound survivors, so it's understandable.

It feels like it was doing its best to be a proper sci-fi, in a very corporate Hollywood kind of a way. It was perfectly watchable, and I appreciate that someone was trying, but the movie doesn't have enough of a sense of self. It would have benefited from being someone's vision, rather than seemingly the product of a boardroom. 

It was obvious that there was going to be some kind of a big twist. It almost felt like a throwback at times - not in style, but in plot at least. If you've seen a few of these sorts of films you'll see the twist coming, and it makes the resolution as much of a bleak bummer as any classic sci-fi. Good pacing, beautifully shot, and well produced. It's far from original, but it's definitely watchable.

                       

Oblivion: 47.7

Congo

                 

Something that starts as a your predictable evil monkey horror film takes an odd turn halfway through the first act as it starts introducing new character after new character (first the scientist and his talking ape, then the creepy European adventurer, Ernie Hudson, the list goes on). The result is a convoluted mess that lurches from action sequence to action sequence without much actual story.

              

              

The characters were laughably two dimensional. You're lucky if you get a cliché outline, basically, and then there's no development to speak of (even for the leads). The same goes for the depiction of the host of central African countries featured, which are made light of is a simplistic and vaguely offensive way throughout.

There are way too many unrelated dangers brought on one after the other, and the whole thing is played way too goofy. If it was self-serious and the budget was a little lower it could have fit into the “so bad it's good” category, but as it was it was too unintentionally cringey to be enjoyable. A full description would sound far more fun than the actual film turned out to be. It carried itself along at a decent pace, but that's just about all that can be said for it.

                 

Congo: 27.6

Surrogates

              

'Surrogates' looks slick, and the cinematography creates an expensive sci-fi thriller aura. The premise is also pretty good, though its execution and the world building is often terrible. Once we get into the details of the premise - that robotic “surrogates” have become a thing (safer, your choice of body, etc) it begins to break down (like, what, everyone in the world owns one of these things? The only people who don't use them all the time are the ones who protest it on a religious/moral level? What do these things cost, a dollar?) Also, all the tech other than the robot people is the same as it is today, making the robots really stand out and creating a fault in the believability of the fiction. The rest of the world needs to fit the sexy robots, really.

          

          
It also totally lacks subtlety, and fails to look too deeply into the morality problems that the film's premise creates (which is arguably the main component of any good sci-fi).
It still provides a reasonably engaging thriller plot though, and gives Willis plenty of opportunities to crash cars, jump through fires, and generally do what he does. I don't he was the best choice to lead the film though, as a more subtle and less action-orientated actor could have starred in a more thoughtful and character-driven movie.

             

Surrogates: 35.4

Alien: Covenant

                   

I'm not too sure how to feel about this one. I liked 'Prometheus', but watching this made me feel like maybe I didn't after all? I mean.. there was a Xenomorph in this one and the plot mostly made sense, so it's better, right? 

On the other hand: fuck you, audience. I liked 'Prometheus', I liked 'A Field in England', I like artsy and I don't think a cohesive plot is important if the film doesn't need it to be. After the outcry over 'Prometheus' they stepped back a little and played it safer with this one. That's fine, and 'Prometheus' certainly went overboard in plenty of places, but to me this film has a little too much 'Rogue One' about it.

               

                

Where 'Prometheus' went full 'Lost' with the number of unanswered wacky mysteries, 'Covenant' doesn't create too many more, and takes steps to answering several of the biggest ones. I appreciate this side of the coin, but the other side is shinier for me - the side that has a Xenomorph headbutting the cockpit of the ship and then being blown out of the airlock at the end. It wasn't as overt as it was in 'Rogue One', but it was present. This kind of fan service is understandable though, especially when it's part of an over-correct. To be fair, a lot of the references to the originals were fairly low key, and I'm probably making a bigger deal out of this than I have to. In my defence, I have become more sensitive to it thanks to the wave of 2000s and 2100s bad remakes. 

The design was great, and all the sets were very much in keeping with the style of the original 'Alien'. All of the visual elements are beautifully put together and the effects were fantastic. There was a pervasive bleak feeling to the whole film, which works well for the series (especially when they were first exploring the planet - that eerie feeling was fantastic, and that was possibly my favourite portion of the movie). 

I also loved the opening - that's basically my dream home, Wayland has taste - and any scenes with Michael Fassbender in it, especially when he's playing David. I didn't like Walter quite so much, possibly just because he's less conniving and evil, but he was a far closer to original androids like Ash or Bishop in his mannerisms.

                    

                         

It lacked the realistic overlapping dialogue and suggestion of a comfortable lived-in relationship between the characters of the original. We had a very slow build up, but instead of exploring the crew (much) we get a lot of details on their mission and the workings of the ship. Personally I love details like this, but I would have appreciated some more character connect too, and I think the slow build up will have bored many viewers (the friend I went to see this with commented on this in the negative, at any rate). It turned out that many of the humans were in relationships with one another, but I never even realised this (and this happened - no joke - at least two or three times) until one of them died and the other one became upset about it. The acting was fine though, and the way that the plot was constructed made the film enjoyable and exciting, especially towards the second and third acts.

                          

Alien: Covenant: 66.7

The Ring

             

Americans can't read, so they remade 'Ring' with slightly worse actors and a more heavy handed script. Of course the main characters have to be literally related to the girl that dies at the start, her son has to literally be wearing a little grey suit to show us how old he is at heart, she has to go visit the crazy girl for a cheap creepy scene. Watching it right after the original makes it quite funny, seeing all the subtle little character traits turned into clichés. A good example of the differences between the American and Japanese versions of this film are in the victims. In the original they're ghostly white, their eyes are wide and staring, and their mouths are agape in terror. They seem to have been killed by the fright of the last thing they saw. There's no gore, but that almost makes it more scary. Then in the American version the first victim is blotchy and appears to the in the initial stages of decay, despite only having died a few hours ago. Her eyes are bloodshot and turned up in her skull and her mouth is open and full of blood and gore, which is covering the lower portion of her face making her look like a zombie. 'The Ring' relies of a quick shot of the victim and a stinger cord to create fear, while the original indulges in a lingering close up as a police officer pushes the body back into a sitting position (something about which is morbid in itself, it's like watching old holocaust footage or something). Straight away the remake feels more lazy and cheap, and it's a feeling that doesn't go away.

                                 

                  

It's still a moderate to decent horror by itself though. It looked more expensive, the quality of the film was higher, and there were plenty of nice artsy shots. I really liked some of the clips in the video in this one, especially the one of the maggots that jumps to a similar aerial shot of bodies jostling in mud. The plot was also far more cohesive, if traditional and boring, than the original.

Remakes are usually worse than the originals. Sometimes they're better. Interestingly, this film is better than the original at what the Japanese version was weakest at (pacing, story structure, and the crispness of the visuals) but doesn't live up to anything else (most notably the originals great acting, suspense, subtlety and general quality of the scares).

                     

I loved the little nod to 'Rear Window' as she looks out and sees all the other people in their front rooms with their TVs on - one of them even has a broken leg.

               

The Ring: 37.8

Ring

                

'Ring' combines an emerging teen culture in an increasingly tech savvy nation with a traditional Asian style ghost story. It's very much of its time (in the way it was executed) but has aged really well. The leads were fantastic, and the effects (though basic) are low key and few and far between which keeps them from getting boring and works in a low budget medium. 

The opening scene is one of my favourites in horror. There's a perfectly excruciating build up and release of tension as the girl tells her friend a scary story - but it's just a story - but it happened to her friend! - nah, not really - but then the phone rings! All of this turns out to be a prolonged cold open, and we never even see either of the girls again (though they are mentioned). Instead, we switch to our protagonist who's investigation of the ghostly deaths soons becomes personal when she, her kid, and her ex all end up watching the video (oh yeah there's this video and if you watch it you die after a week - I don't think I really need to give a proper plot synopsis on such a popular film). I like the two main characters; they interact naturally and you can tell they have a lot of history without it being explained outright. 

The start proves somewhat confusing, and the plot proceeds rather choppily that can make the story hard to follow. While the confusion over who the main characters are is soon rectified, the film continues to suffer pacing problems throughout.

                  

                     

The scene towards the end where they're taking it in turns to literally go down the well and stand in the water, knowing she's in there somewhere, is another one that really stood out to me. It culminates as Sadako grabs at her arm and we cut from her ghostly fingernail-less hand to her hair slipping wetly from her fleshless skull. It's pretty horrifying, and the revelation at the end that it was all essentially for nothing made it all the worse (not the granddad, he was actually likeable!) 

The editing is good all over. There's nothing overly complex, but the long shots and quiet ambient sound followed by quick cuts and flashes is a reliable horror recipe. I really liked the creepy chord that played whenever the date appears - the progression of time is something to be feared in this film. 

Minimalist and restrained yet at times alarmingly intense.

                 

Ring: 55.7

Predator

               

Vietnam meets 'Aliens', action meets horror, and Schwarzenegger meets Predator in this classic testosterone fuelled tropical thriller. 

The story is straight forward - An alien comes to Earth in search of dangerous prey (people) and interrupts a load of humans who are busy fighting one another. All but the first scene is set in the rain forest, and the setting is used to great effect, often being as much as a menace to the characters as the gorillas or the alien is. Suspense is built very well, especially in the first forty minutes, and the abundance of close shot sweaty faces creates a great feeling of claustrophobia despite the outdoor surroundings. If you come into it expecting continuous action it can be dull at times though, especially towards the start where there are lots of lingering shots of dense forest, and the final fight scene that I felt dragged on a bit too long.

                     

           

This is one of the best, possibly THE best, Arnold movies acting-wise. Where he's playing a real human, anyway (obviously the terminator was great but he didn't have to act like a person for that - acting like an emotionless robot is his speciality). Other than the Schwarzenegger standard, the acting in this often boarders on hammy, and this is one of the elements that give it the feeling of a traditional dumb 80's action film (as well as the style of all the action, especially the big assault on the guerilla base fairly early on in the film). Carl Weathers is by far the most competent actor in this, and apparently Schwarzenegger took a lot of cues from him. I was always bummed that Billy dies off screen though - I don't any reason for it, and he was kinda built up to be this badass survivalist guy (even cutting his chest prior to fighting the Predator) but all he gets is an off-screen scream? Missed opportunity I'd say, especially considering how nicely shot that fight would have been on the tree bridge.

A really memorable part of 'Predator' is the score, which was made by the same guy who had recently done the one for 'Back to the Future', and thanks to a limited release post movie was in high demand for a long time. Most of the effects have stood up quite well over time too (though maybe not the early 'TNG' style electrical effects). The invisibility effect in particular was very experimental and still looks pretty great. The costume was fantastic, especially the face with the moving mandibles and the detailing around the hairs.

                  

                 

The whole Predator character, the way that he moves and looks, raises this film heads and shoulders above the competition. It's very well realised in a way that doesn't pull you out of the film (so often the monster is stilted in movement and poorly made-up, and doesn't provide a believable adversary). Some of the hand acting looked a little clunky, but other than that it was spot on.

Overall this is a solid genre crossing action flick with some very quotable moments. It's become more of a classic over time, and I appreciate that it's not trying to be anything more than what feels natural (much like things like 'Die Hard').

                       

Predator: 81.7

Arrival

                

'Arrival' was a pleasant surprise hidden among so many dumb sci-fi action films about aliens invading Earth that were made around the same time. 

It's nearly a hard sci-fi. There's very little action (and it mainly takes place off screen), with the film focusing on the problems of communicating with an alien race. Twelve ships appear hovering over the Earth, each in a different seemingly random location. Each one opens every 18 hours and the two aliens inside can be viewed and interacted with.

I like that we don't see the ship at first, just a long build up of glimpsed news footage and finally her reaction to seeing it, from the screens point of view. Obvious '2001' comparisons aside, the ship is of a nice simple design, towering over the natural landscape. Once they're in the ship a lot of shots are upside down (from the point of view of the characters). Along with the droning ambient music this creates creates a great feeling of unease. The suspense is built before the final reveal of the aliens. I like their design, as they're actually quite alien, but it's also rather understated in keeping with the rest of the film.

                

                 

I didn't really care for her backstory all that much (as is often the case with me) but the way that the “memories” of her daughter were mixed in with related events in the present was nicely done. The twist that many of what the audience took to be memories were in fact the future was an excellent one, and I had only partially guessed it (I was thinking the scientist guy was maybe the father and I thought it would be time travel related as there was so much talk of the aliens having such a different concept of time, but I was thought maybe she would go back in time and save her daughter or something that like - I much preferred the plot they went with, it was far smarter). 

There were very strong themes of circular time, language, and working together in this film, and they were brought to the forefront by the simple yet often beautiful cinematography and washed out colours. The plot was also fairly straight forward, but it plays out really nicely, and I like that they didn't spell it out for the audience. The character's emotions are very much on display, which I could give or take, but at least it's not super Hollywoody where everything is melodramatic and eye-roll inducing. I'd have been fine with a harder sci-fi that focused even more on the alien tech and details about their language and how the humans went about learning it (and more on how each country reacted, maybe more detail about how the Chinese communicated through Mah Jong - that sounded interesting). 

Overall a great sci-fi that's worthy of the name, with a solid concept, great acting from the female lead, and engaging cinematography.

                    

Arrival: 78.6

Beware! Children at Play

                

Other than the shocker of an ending, 'Beware! Children at Play' is a somewhat banal horror that has serious acting and pacing issues. 

It's another Troma Team movie (these guys have a special place in my heart) and like many others, it's terrible. After a fairly interesting opening sequence (a guy and his kid are camping out in New Jersey, the man dies, and the kid eats him) the film slows down and quickly becomes boring. The kid is now a young man, and is completely feral and obsessed with stories of Grendel from Beowulf. He gathers a kids, which fall under his spell ridiculously easily, and goes around killing and eating adults. There are a few cool deaths, but too much boring exposition, until we reach the insane climax.

              

                 

All the kids get brutally massacred by the townspeople. Yep. Stabbed, shot, axed, pitch forked, macheted - one even gets shot in the mouth, and his brains splatter onto a wooden wall with a big smiley face on it. I loved it, and to be honest I was laughing and clapping for most of this scene. The gore isn't very well done, and the acting is terrible, but that makes for some fun moments. 

The surprise ending doesn't quite push this film into the “so bad it's good” category though, as the rest of the film drags so much and I never really liked, let alone connected, with any of the main characters. The script is lazy and boring, the footage quality and lighting is just generally bad, and the audio is impressively terrible (on the version I watched anyway).
                     

Beware! Children at Play: 24.7

The Black Hole

        

Hey, Disney made a 'Star Wars' movie! No, not those 'Star Wars' movies - this is 1979. Remember 'The Black Hole'? Oh right, well I'm going to be talking about it for the next 375 words anyway. 

                    

So our main characters are on a little exploration ship, and they find this big lost ship on the edge of a black hole. It's controlled by a mad scientist, and there are lots of annoying robots everywhere.

The main one was the worst. It was obviously meant to be the R2 character, but the attempts at cuteness were just irritating. The script was also impressively bad, with characters often making laughably obvious statements or musing pointlessly on boring subjects. The actual acting wasn't so bad, but was often bland. There was never really a main character, other than the wacky scientist guy, and I never really cared about any of them. 

             

                     

The plot progressed weirdly slowly sometimes (why such a long setup and dinner scene?) then at other times kicked into high gear and stopped making much sense (so after twenty uneventful years, a whole storm of meteors come to fuck up the ship just as the protagonists are trying to escape?). A lot of stuff just randomly happens for no apparent reason too, like that whole bit at the start where they were having so much trouble docking, or the target shooting match the robot had with that other robot that then never shows up again. This whole film could have been half an hour long and would be far more interesting for it. 
The effects weren't terrible for the time and the budget, and I liked the design of the big ship's interior and the swirling of the black hole itself (though it didn't look very scientifically accurate, but then little was in this film). Some of the shots were downright beautiful, though often kinda goofy (as an example see the picture I used for this review. Looks cool, huh? Yeah, well that's a meteor, which broke into the ship and then rolled along inside it...) I feel like this should have been adapted into an episode of 'Star Trek' or something (maybe have the main characters be an away team that can't beam back for some reason, but who then escape back to the Enterprise on the probe ship or whatever - maybe have Brent Spiner as the mad scientist), but it was just about passable as a children's sci-fi adventure.

                       

The Black Hole: 30.1