Film Reviews by sb

Really did not vibe with this, set my teeth on edge from the start with a credits sequence shamelessly cribbing from Se7en - both visually and the Trent Reznor wannabe score, director Derrickson bagged the real thing for his next effort The Gorge). The story follows a series of child abductions in a small American town in the seventies. These are the work of a pedophile serial killer who poses as a magician to lure kids into his clutches. However, when the film's teen hero becomes his next abductee the movie develops two competing supernatural plots. One has the ghosts of previous victims communicating via a disconnected 'black phone' in the killer's basement. The killer frequent remarks that the phone doesn't work, so why is it there? The other has our hero's kid sister receiving Shining-esque dreams come visions (intersting that the film is adapted from a short story by Joe Hill, Stephen King's son) and ultimately assisting the police. Neither of these two sub plots seem to relate to one another and both end up leeching attention from the other. Ultimately the film really fails due to a critical lack of scares. 

The two child leads are terrific though. 

An absolute mess of sub-plots with very little substance. This needed a script editor with a chainsaw. It’s such a slapdash affair I’m surprised it’s not actually a Netflix movie. Moderately entertaining, but where the original felt effortlessly weird, this is trying very hard. 

Surprisingly fun popcorn movie that moves a air clip even if it has little depth and the stakes seem weirdly low given the loss of life and property destruction on display. There's very little connection to the original Twister making this more remake than sequel. Glen Powell and his rag tag band of storm chasers are initially extremely grating but calm down as the film progresses. What does not calm down is the wall to wall soundtrack of awful FM radio country rock.  

Remaking a beloved cult classic is a tricky thing to pull off well, even if to be honest I have always felt the original Crow has been elevated beyond its actual merits by the on set death of star Brandon Lee. Sadly this long gestating version should have stayed in the oven cooking for another few years. Bafflingly this new Crow strips back the original film’s lore and introduces new elements (like a visualisation of purgatory) that either add little, or simply make no sense.  The actual Crow of the title is little more than mall-goth window dressing here, no explanation is given for the twink hero. Suddenly developing martial arts skills in the last act, and the villains are so paperthin that the make the original’s Fun Boy look like a Shakespeare character. Apparently the film was shot without a finished screenplay, and it shows. The lead actors are given nothing to work with, bad enough for an experienced actor like Bill Skarsgaard, but a disaster for pop singer FKA Twigs who flounders despite having a unique screen presence and dancer’s physicality. 

The film leans surprisingly hard into 18 cert gore, but the action is blighted by obvious CGI blood, and there basically isn’t any until the last act. It looks fabulous, especially in 4k, but when the material is this flimsy… so what?

Clearly intended as a contemporary allegory for atrocities in the Vietnam war and based on a horrific real life massacre of native Americans by US Cavalry, this is exploitation masquerading as an issue film. If it was actually interested in the historical crushing of indigenous Americans in the name of 'manifest destiny' then it might have avoided the insulting casting of mexican actors in principle native american roles. Whilst bookended by two sequences of carnage, the majority of the film is a limp romance between a simpering dolt of a soldier played with a Haight AShbury haircut by Peter Strauss, and Candice Bergan's liberated free spirit. The finale is a 15 minute massacre sequence with US cavalry raining first artillery fire then charging a mostly defenceless Cheyenne encampment. It is still shocking to this day due to the sexualised violence and killing of children, but it's graphic nature is undercut by the use of thick Hammer Horror blood and director Ralph Nelson is a journeyman and absolutely no Sam Peckinpah (a Peckinpah version of this story could have been the most unwatchable film ever made and does not bear thinking about. 

Rent Arthur Penn's Little Big Man for more complex and thoughtful exploration of these themes.