Film Reviews by Strovey

Upstream Colour (or Color in the USA) is a difficult film to describe in many ways. It is very loosely plotted, slow and at times makes little sense from a linear story-telling point of view. The slow lazy progress and seemingly haphazard story will infuriate many people and I can imagine probably 50% of any random audience leaving way before the end.

The biggest problem with the film, aside from the glacial pace, is large swathes of the story are hard to understand and seemingly deliberately obscure. This can be immensely frustrating, for me the frustration came at the end of the film when a couple of end scenes did not wrap up anything up and just made me scratch my head. Whether the director, writer, and the actor playing Jeff, Shane Carruth, made it this way on purpose I do not know.

The film is very dreamlike in the imagery throughout giving it more of a Euro-Arthouse project and certainly the subject matter, what I believe the maker was trying to say, is more on a level with these more esoteric and sometimes impenetrable films. The acting, particularly by Amy Seimetz playing Kris, is beautifully realised and she certainly glues the film together when it could easily fall apart the seams from time to time but overall when thinking about the film, and after seeing it you do, the overriding question is more than likely ‘what was that about’.

There is a theme of a complete loss of identity and the breakdown of everything you are to start again – I think. The tasks given by The Thief that come back to Kris are making paperchains and reading a novel by Walden, a writer I have no experience of, other than some comments of it being dreary and almost torture to read, perhaps this is an in-joke. The connection of all living things seems to be in there somewhere although I cannot help feeling the pivotal character of the Pig Farmer/Sampler, played by Andrew Sensenig, maybe should have been a bit less obfuscating to make a little more sense of his part in the story. Was he the man who started it all or a benign presence?

If you ever find out tell me.

I did not dislike Upstream Colour but neither did I really like it. Definitely a curate’s egg of a movie and will divide opinion from all that witness it. I enjoyed it during my viewing but overall, I felt that Carruth should perhaps use joined-up writing just a little more so that the ideas he is trying to explore did appear through a fog of confusion.

Somewhere in Upstream Colour there is a really good, interesting and thoughtful story and indeed question but perhaps a lack of budget or good creative partner for Carruth muddied the waters. Having said this if the director/ writer carries on in this vein pushing ideas and themes such as this and in Primer he is going to make a fantastic film that you will not be able to forget.

Having never read the book or particularly being able to remember the previous film and television versions The Secret Garden comes to me with no baggage attached. I was not expecting something I had seen or read in a cherished past. So often with cherished classic adaptations this is the film’s biggest weakness, and some would say its strength.

The writer and director could have just made a straight down the middle modern version of any of the other versions or indeed the source novel but much to their credit they have put a spin on it that they hope will belong to them. Their vision if you like. Unfortunately, this will alienate probably a good half of the audience before Colin Firth reveals his ‘hunch back’. For anyone like me it does not hit us over the head with the hammer of outrage.

The story is fairly simple and not particularly original, if you boil off the outer coatings it is unlikable character learns that there is more to life than being spoiled and that she was always loved and becomes likeable, it is how we get there that makes the film.

To my eyes and admittedly simple mind we are hand-held throughout the story by Mary, very well played by Dixie Egerickx who should have a long career in entertainment ahead of her if she so chooses, and Mary is a 10-year-old child, an unreliable narrator to wear out a phrase that is in danger of falling to pieces. I assumed what you see on the screen is her recollection, even the dramatic finale, so the robin, enormous plants and foliage, the garden seemingly acres and acres in size and apparently somewhere around a twenty-mile walk from the manor all come from the rich imagination of a girl we are shown loves to tell anybody she meets stories. The events happened, but not in that way. I settled into this way of viewing the film early on and so I enjoyed what I viewed without fussing over the anomalies.

If you bookend the children with Colin Firth and Julie Walters you have sound, strong foundations but as mentioned before Egerickx is an extraordinarily talented young actor and unfortunately outshines her supporting youthful actors, Amir Wilson and Edan Hayhurst, they try their best but there is tiny acting colossus striding about in front of them. To be fair there is nothing wrong with either performance but their characters are not given a lot to do other than get the story to a point needed.

The CGI work of the colourful garden fits right in with the magical feel of the story that surprisingly is grounded in death and grief and points out not too subtly that only nurturing and caring causes anything to thrive. This is okay though as surely much of the audience will be parents and children I would think. So simplifying the original story making it bright with a strong and clear happy ending fits right in there.

The Secret Garden is a much-loved classic and this version is a more modern take with characters updated, removed, changed to fit in with the vision. It does not make it a bad version simply different. As it is this Secret Garden sits well as a family-orientated film that tries to show grief, loss, fear and redemption without making it terrifying or depressing for young viewers. Sometimes films are not made for those looking nostalgically over their shoulders and old cynical people like me.

The vision of the cinematography is colourful and evocative at the right times, dark and menacing when it needs to be, the score suits what is in front of you and the acting is good enough for any film and in some places superb.

The Secret Garden is not going to take your breath away and stay with you for the weeks and months to come but it does what it is meant to do and in general does it very well.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is about great big monsters stomping the crap out of cities and people and then having no-holds-barred fights with each other. It is that simple. The original Japanese versions were as bonkers fun but had an underlying message about the nuclear proliferation and horror of having atomic bombs dropped on your country. Perhaps it may not have seemed that obvious, but it was there amongst Tokyo being stamped into matchwood.

The message for this 2019 version is the planet’s health and how if we do choose the correct path then we will not need Godzilla or his wacky enemies to destroy the planet will do it ourselves. Really though this is about massive monsters stomping cities into rumble and roundhouse pounding each other with much fire and roaring.

In this respect Godzilla: King of the Monsters works perfectly. It knows what it is, director Michael Dougherty apparently loved these films and the little kid in him shows in every frame on the screen. The cast Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, in particular, are great, play this all with a straight bat which is the only way to do this. It is camp and silly but if you wink to the audience you ruin it. Kyle Chandler, having taken on King Kong a few years ago and got away, now takes on Godzilla, his mates and enemies and his own estranged family this time around. Charles Dance pops up, in cold bad mode but at least not two-dimensional although ruthlessly evillike only Charles Dance can be.

For all the acting talent up there on the screen, Godzilla: King of the Monsters lives or dies by its monsters. The fighting, roaring, jumping up and down a bit and general mayhem by a roster of rather silly monsters is perfect. It took me back to the days of stamping around the fields near my house being a monster whilst my brother and his mates laughed at me. For me this was the purpose of the film.

So, what if the storyline involvies separated parents, mistaken motivations, two conflicting ideas, one of which is obviously ‘bad’ this is not the purpose of the film, but it pads it out, so something is there. It is perfunctory and perhaps it could have been better but in all honesty I did not care. How can you care when you can watch a giant moth curing and giant ‘lizard-king-thing’ but cuddling him?

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a giant monster film with some human bits as filler before the WWE of creature fighting gets going. The human bits are not the best, but the actors are good and besides the aforementioned thespians we also get Sally Hawkins, Bradley Whitfield in best Bradley Whitfield-mode, Thomas Middleditch so much better here as the ‘nerd’ that he was in Zombieland 2, shoring up the human roster.

To me this was all good. It made me feel the exhilaration of being a little boy watching monsters knocking the stars out of each other. Perhaps I was in the right mood to watch that type of action, who knows?

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is camp, silly, trashy, daft but above all it was fun, really fun.

Loving Vincent is indeed ‘loving Vincent’ as we are treated to Van Gogh well-known works coming to life and presenting what is frankly and interesting and intriguing story. Van Gogh wrote regularly to his brother Theo so the conceit of one final letter having to be delivered fits in perfectly with the troubled artist's life and makes sense of what is a sort of amateur sleuth tale.

If you are familiar with the work of Vincent van Gogh, then the story will be a visual treat but to be fair it should be to those who are not as well. The treatment of his work is accurate and respectful and the film presents a balance of the views of van Gogh the way he behaved how others saw him in the same way. It is no ‘paintwash’ of history or a beloved artist whom many think was ‘mad’ and cut his ear off and painted Starry Night – that is it. This film fills in a lot of missing sections of a story many feel they ‘sort of know’ and does it in an entertaining and magnificently made way.

What do you call the film – an animation? Artists we used to paint the scenes in van Gogh’s distinctive style, is it a moving painting. I actually do not know. Either way it works and is very entertaining.

The actors, having to work mainly on green screens, all put in a great job, in particular Douglas Booth the pivot the film who starts off as a layabout who cares not for Vincent but who ends up admiring the clearly ill van Gogh and understanding what his father saw in the man that made him such an admirer and friend. To the actor and maker's credit it seems genuinely of a revelatory journey for the young man.

There is a lot you can say about van Gogh and there is a lot you can say about the film Loving Vincent but much like his art the best advice I can give you is, see it, experience it. You will be glad you did, and I guarantee you will learn something about one this world’s greatest and most misunderstood artists.

Highly recommended.

Some people will find The Wailing terrifying of that I have no doubt. Tonally we start off with gruesome death, although gruesome is mainly in the mind, the actual victims are in shadow, there are blood sprays seen up the walls but for overall grue there really is not as much as you believe there is. Always a good sign when a filmmaker is confident enough of their own storyteller to let the viewer’s imagination do the heavy lifting. But what we start off with is a funny film. I can honestly say the first third of the film is definitely comedic but in a situation way rather than comedy characters. Jong-goo, superbly played by Do-won Kwak, is at best an average cop, bumbling at times, not punctual, the antithesis of the usual protagonists in these types of films that are either heroic or tragic or all parts between. For me this grabbed my attention immediately.

As the film progresses so does the development of Jong-goo whose foolish ideas, bravado and impulsive decisions become less comic and more tragic and serious. There are still flashes of almost slapstick humour as one character is struck by lightning and staggers about, a shaman has more showman and charlatan about him and preens around but the tone is not completely lost. Afterall, if you are honest, life can be like that, one minute you are in a Charlies Chaplin film, the next it is a murder film. A no point are the murders, violent events, passed off with quirky or clever remark.

It is difficult to describe too much more of the film and story without ruining it for a first-time viewer, suffice to say the ending lays it all on the line and seems to be straight forward and easy to comprehend, although if you think back through the previous two or so hours, maybe not so much. This is the trick of director Na Hong-jin I honestly believe he wants you to interpret what you have seen, what you take away from it is personal to you. Is it a metaphor on religion, tradition, or on the difference between different communities or how you view people, how you trust them, the trust in traditional superstition or logic? It can be and I believe is all of these things but is overall a good horror film.

The cinematography is beautiful with the claustrophobic and chaotic village presented as such then beautiful almost prehistoric forests magnificently portrayed in verdant green crowned in soft white mists.

If anything detracts from this magnificent horror film perhaps the running time could have been snipped back a bit. The middle third was baggy, where the film flips over from comedic to horrific, it felt a bit clunky and the friends traipsing around the forest, getting involved in a fight with…. well I will not reveal it…. was not obviously necessary to the plot and if it had been removed entirely would have mad not difference to the story. Some of the acting seemed a bit over the top and hysterical but whether this is quirk of the genre or origin of the film I am not expert enough to know. These are only small quibbles though and all the actors acquitted themselves favourable.

If you want to watch something different, something that might make you think what they heck you have just seen, then as someone who is definitely not a horror-film aficionado I recommend The Wailing highly.

If this film has done anything it has made me want to seek out Na Hong-jin’s back catalogue, small as it is.

First thing with this film you must switch off your brain. Honestly, the minute you start thinking about what you are watching your head will start throbbing and the chances are you will start laughing hysterically and perhaps never stop. I have to say it, and it gives me no pleasure, I do not like being the ‘clever know-it-all critic’, but this film is stupid. I mean insultingly stupid.

On the positive some of the visuals and shots are amazing and some of the CGI and effects are great, if seemingly oh-so-familiar at times, although the de-aging at the beginning of the film initially brought about, ‘what’s wrong with this’ thoughts the minute you see it. Jason Momo is quite funny in a smart-alecky way but also in a very inappropriate way but to be honest this is a problem with a lot of films nowadays where the main characters, often heroes, make off-the-cuff witty remarks after they have just slaughtered or at the least shattered the bones of some un-named, unknown expendable henchman. In my view it is tiring, boring and now getting very dull.

The characters throughout are extremely pantomime-like and I get no feeling of a real living person with beliefs, feelings and a past, which is criminal with the great actors on display and the fact it is a comic-book world which lives and dies on ‘origin stories’. Black Manta with his entire crew of baddies is so Sir Jasper Naughty-Bonce it was bordering on parody and his motivation seems to be from the Steven Segal school of direction ‘he’s evil’ that is it. Snarling, frowning and looking angry does not make a villain in the modern world of filmmaking, it did in the 1920s, but one hundred years have passed since then.

The dialogue was poor and even more exposition-heavy than Birds of Prey because what they did with Margot Robbie’s voice-over monologue in that film was achieved with some heavy lifting exposition-wise, none too subtle and hilarious in its clunkiness. You know, the way nobody in real life talks at all.

There did not seem to be much chemistry between Heard and Momo and a lot of their interaction together seemed stilted and we were treated to yet another ‘wrong-time to have a snog’ scene. If I am going to get on my high-horse I have to say what is the matter with these filmmakers, death-defying battles, fighting, killing hordes of people, being close to dying, all are not times when anyone would thing about having a really good tonguing-snog. I could not even get women to do that when it was a romantic situation.

The plot twists in the story, which was very railroad track straight in the progress it was making, was written on a billboard that could be seen after the opening 15 minutes had passed. The logic of the world that was created had all the rules broken from time to time and did not make sense, I mean obviously people living and breathing underwater riding giant non-existent seahorses so making sense moved out of the house a few months before but, nevertheless. Here are two I spotted; I am sure others have spotted more. Aquaman was worried about falling off a roof in his ‘destroy a village in Sicily’ fight but also can jump out of a plane at altitude into the Sahara Desert with no harm done. If he and Mera can swim like torpedoes fired from a nuclear sub and breath and talk underwater, in fact they prefer that life, we did they ever use a crappy fishing boat to get anywhere? Particularly as Aquaman can use the creatures of the sea to do his bidding. It is stupid.

Forget this is a comic-book film, DC or otherwise, forget it is supposed to dovetail in with other movies I have not seen and probably never will now, take it as a science-fiction-fantasy movie, that due to some of the more serious content, is mainly targeted at older children and adults.

Then it is still an extremely poor film.

Birds of Prey starts off with Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn updating us on her progress and state in the world. In other words a huge exposition dump. So far so dull. For me the character of Harley Quinn is annoying and pointless even before this film and the only point for her in the previous films was teeny-tiny shorts and lingering shots of bottoms and legs plus she was a sort of water-downed evil.

In this film written by Christina Hodson and directed Cathy Yan we at least get away from the leering sexuality of the previous portrayal but if you are looking for an interesting feminist point of view from the story and characters, you are not going to get it. The male characters are all repugnant from the get-go which did not bother me but just seemed a bit sledge-hammery if I am honest. What we ended up with was female super-villains-heroes or whatever they are doing exactly what their male counterparts did in the other films. You could replace every main character with a male character, and you would not notice it. So, from my point of view utterly redundant. I wanted the film to say something different, open my old, jaded eyes. It did not.

Probably the most disappointing aspect for me though was the acting in the film was spotty at least. Mary Elizabeth Winstead just looked like she was acting and was thoroughly unconvincing and Rosie Perez probably turned in her worst showing since I can remember. At one time it is said she was every bad cop-movie cliché which I am guessing was supposed to be ‘on’ and ‘meta’, but she was and it was wearisome.

The Huntresses’ real boyfriend, Ewan McGregor, turns up as the main villain Roman Sionis who apparently is called the Black Mask although he only dons it for ten minutes and I am none the wiser why he does. McGregor makes a good show of being over-the-top insane and so camp he should be a holiday park in Wales but if it were not for his thorough bleak and blank unpleasantness, he would to all intents and purposes be a yaa-boo pantomime baddy.

Therein lies the rub. I think, I do not know because the Comic Book World is not mine, DC is supposed to be darker than Marvel. This film was, but there is a big clash of styles in all this. Bright jokey situations, smart-Alec and sharp-witted quipping protagonists, and bloody murder, slaughter, torture and bystander slaughter. Unless you have got something fundamentally wrong with you these do not really mix. They really do not. It is jarring.

There was something nasty in the dark corners of this film, something unpleasant, mean-spirited, it liked being there and it was never far from the surface. I did not enjoy the spectacle just because of this.

The sets seem Gotham City-like, grubby New Yorkesque, and Harley Quinn is bad-ass and uncaring enough to litter, the CGI is quite poor for a modern film, particularly the hyena, and worse still I am sorry to say the exciting fight scenes look choreographed and seem clunking and slow much like a large portion of the dialogue which is full of really heavy and awkward exposition at times.

The story is about the hunt for a lost diamond. That is it. The titular group Birds of Prey are in the film for five minutes at the most and there seems to be no real driving reason for them if I am honest.

Overall Birds of Prey is underwhelming and unnecessary. One more comic-book film like this and I think I will be done with this category altogether. At the moment Shazam is holding the fort for all ‘DC films’.

Not good enough.

Bad Times at the El Royale could have been just another Tarantino wannabe but skilfully directed by Drew Goddard it subverts most expectations the longer it goes on. With a solid and small cast, the whole story is strongly underpinned. Certainly, filming from different character’s perspectives and swimming fully in the non-linear pool we are not in virgin territory but with the pace generally staying at frenetic Goddard keeps your eyes glued to the screen and caring what is happening.

Truth be told for this jaded old fart watching several story points were lost on me and surprised me at the reveal, although that damn-attractive Dakota Johnson’s storyline quicky unravelled with half an hour of the running time. As I say I have watched and read a lot of fiction and I am incredibly old.

The vivid colours of the cinematography help distract from what is basically a stage-based story and give the film a comic-book fantasy edge even though we are strictly in a nasty adult world here. Here is where I feel the big difference is between this being a Drew Goddard film and a Tarantino film. I have always got the impression from Tarantino that he somehow really enjoys the dark violence and death in his films, he enjoys the pain, torture and death that the characters are put through. Somewhere in the shadows of his film something is sitting and smiling. With this story, which has the same plot points, murder, torture, inestimable cruelty, Goddard is winking at us. It is all make-believe, fun, if a little gruesome. Children’s games of war in the playground. There is a place for all stories and ways of telling them but at my age I am started to get a little tired of bleak, never-ending nihilism, where the only reward of life is a sad, bloody end.

Having said that we are presented with stories of redemption that do not work out and Chris Hemsworth, sans shirt, is a sexy Sir Jasper Naughty-Bonce. He plays it well and I guess the role makes sense for no shirt, but you cannot help feeling there is some pandering going on here. To say I disliked him throughout this film is praise indeed for his betrayal. The nasty streak in him plays well on screen.

The film, characters and their stories drag you in if you are prepared to be patient and pay attention and with a snip-snapping way of presenting the tale and a long running time it is testament to Goddard that at no time did I get fidgety and the end credits had rolled my wife remarked on the slight pong of my sweat, that's how invested I was.

The twists in the story are good in general and most I will confess I did not see coming. The violence is cartoonish and not gratuitous and without spoiling the tale we are left with some hope.

All the actors are good with Lewis Pullman, Bill Pullman’s son not only being a chip-off-the-old-block in his looks but also in his ability, outstanding and Hemsworth sexy-sliming his way throughout. No film is without flaws and perhaps the running time is a tad too long and at least one character starts off with a backstory but is dropped soon into the running time. You never find out exactly what they were doing there but for one thing. A further reason into the reasons for the El Royale’s existence would have been good. Perhaps this is for another film.

Overall Bad Times at the El Royale is a strong and competent film, well-directed, well-acted, it is violent, thrilling and subverts expectations. The chopping and changing storyline and the violence and unpleasant characters will not be for all but if you like these almost cartoonish-style violent thrillers then give this a go.

Bad Times at the El Royale is good times for the film fan.

This film really is not a biopic of Fred Rogers the iconic Mr Rogers so if you go into this expecting that you will be disappointed. It is, and I have to say another, film about the fractured relationship between children and one or both or their parents or siblings. I get drama, and the general belief that people love to watch conflict, but it is starting to look like everyone in the world hated their parents and did not speak to them anymore. Similar to every ex-service person in a film having been in Special Services and on a conflict zone frontline. So as such if you are an avid film goer you have seen this scenario play out many times in many styles.

This does not necessarily make A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood a bad film. It is not. Tom Hanks brings Fred Rogers back to life with his usual skill and aplomb particularly in his mannerisms, his stillness and calm. I did feel that there was an underlying creepiness to the performance in certain scenes that I never got from films and clips of the real Mr. Rogers. Chris Cooper pops up with his usual hard-ass unpleasant character role although this one has genuinely found redemption in the form of Dorothy before he tries to find his final redemption with his estranged son Lloyd.

Lloyd played by Cardiff-born actor Matthew Rhys is probably the weakest link for me. Not so much the acting but more the situation which seems to get more unlikely as it plays out. These father/son relationships always seem to be the same, a good bit of actorly, showy, conflict and wrapped up nice and neat. As wonderful as Fred Rogers was it is certain he could not just end years of anger and rowing with a few choice words and an impromptu ‘stare-out’. More obvious when the real journalist, Tom Junod, did not actually have a terrible conflict with his father who did not abandon his family, there were no wedding punch-ups. Having said this it is difficult to fit in a long-term friendship that made Junod reassess his whole macho attitude to being a man due to Rogers' influence in just over ninety-minutes. So, no huge criticism then.

The focus of the film is rightly Vogel and Rogers to this extent the women do get side-lined somewhat, which is strange as the director is Marielle Heller a little bit more of the two women in these men’s lives to give a different perspective might have added a bit more interest but this is just my idea and certainly as the film is edited and shown it is not detrimental.

The recreation of the cities and towns as Mr. Rogers Neighborhood of Make-Believe as we transition between different scenes is a great artistic and clever device. Is Heller telling us that although this is set in the real world it is still all make-believe. Or have I booked myself a place in Pseud’s Corner? Nevertheless, I liked the idea.

All of the acting is exemplary and Heller has a top-notch cast to hand and her directing is good, trimming the fat of what could be a sappy and saccharine and getting to the nub of the story she wants to tell. The film is good and entertaining.

If you would like to see something that tells you more about Fred Rogers, the way he thought, his philosophy and outlook then A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood salutes this and even hints at the illness that ended his life, but it is not about this. I would recommend the 2018 documentary Won’t You Been My Neighbor by Morgan Neville, which is entirely about the man, his influence, the people he interacted with and is much more moving.

Armando Iannucci and Simon Blackwell were always going to have a task at hand without worrying about what a few dyed-in-the-wool racists think about having a black actor playing a white actor’s mum and that task is the same as anyone who tries to commit well-loved Dickens novel to the cinema. It the fact that the length of a film cannot fit all the nuance and intricacies of most, if not all, of Dickens novels.

So we end up with quick cuts, exclusions and skimming from the original text, so as it ever was.

Iannucci is well known for his scalpel sharp wit and take on both modern and historical politics showing it up for all of its redundancy, pomp and ridiculousness but clearly the modern world and our glorious leaders have made his take on this redundant. So why not to Dickens who stories were equally scapel sharp, astute comments on Victorian Britain?

This take on David Copperfield flows with an eccentric oddball humour from the off and we are swept along with some speed through the title character’s trials and tribulations. Unfortunately this is at the expense of supporting characters so we only get thumbnail sketches of them and it depends on the skill of the actor whether you connect with the person on the screen. Due to some excellent casting and some great locations in general the film gets away with it.

Dev Patel is uniformly excellent in anything he puts his hand to and his kind-hearted and honest David Copperfield is no exception and luckily he is ably supported by Peter Capaldi as an unlikely Mr. Micawber, as optimistic as ever, and a myriad of experienced and talented actors from Hugh Laurie, in a role that seems to have been waiting for Hugh Laurie over the years, Tilda Swinton carrying on her quest to seemingly play only strange and eccentric people, and the aforementioned Rosalind Eleazar as Agnes who captured all attention as soon as he appeared on the screen for me. Ben Whishaw must be mentioned in dispatches as everyone’s favourtie slimey, hang-wringing Uriah Heep, black hat firmly in place but oddly just enough sympathy at the closing stages of the film.

The problem is not in the direction, writing, cinematography, sets or acting but rather the material and after enjoying and watching The Personal History of David Copperfield you feel as if some large part of it was left on the editing floor, it wasn’t it was simply this was story telling pared down to fit in with cinema running times and modern audiences.

As such the film did a good job and all those involved such proud and pleased with their efforts, Unfortunately though, and I say this with a heavy-heart being an admirer of Armando Innaunci, this film proved to me that David Copperfield would be best served with a high value production TV series with enough episodes to do the story justice.

Still fun enough for a Sunday afternoon viewing with all the family.

For a Swedish film without a Hollywood budget, particularly science-fiction, you must admire the special effects and future-look presented. Presumably a luxury craft transporting people to a new life would look spic and span with clean lines more like some giant shopping mall geared to luxury for people who were heading into an unknown and Martian life. The technology of Mima is slightly mysterious throughout and presumably it some type of organic-based machine that can interact with the human brain but that is left to the viewer and this really is not a problem story-wise.

The acting, as far as I can tell, is good throughout and no hint of the histrionics were are usually treated to in this type of film, especially when ‘disaster’ strikes the control room is quiet calm and trying to figure out what to do. Taking notes Ron ‘shouty arm-waving’ Howard? It was refreshing to see there was tough situation being faced in the ship’s control room without shouting, screaming and foot stamping. Like real life. Clearly the dialogue is in Swedish and I, being the dumb-arsed British person I am can hardly speak English, so I have no idea if the actors were delivering corny lines and overacting but their body language and general demeanour would say not, so I’m going with that view.

Apparently, the film is based entirely on well-known Swedish poem written in 1956 at a time when some people believed we would not even get to the moon let alone protracted space travel or ‘emigration’ to a new world. So it comes as some surprise that a film based on this premise made in 2018 still features conceits in that work. Would the people in charge be fully aware of space debris and plan around that before risking thousands of people’s lives? Would what appeared to be an Allen bolt cause that much damage? Jet passenger planes have three back-ups for every system but a massive passenger carrying space craft does not? How would they survive on algae and where does the water come from? All these questions and others will be answered by someone with more time on their hands and who is more worried about it than me. To fair to Aniara you can do this with every futuristic type story and corners are often cut for expedience and other eminently sensible and budgetary reasons.

What Aniara tries to be about is the human condition and much deeper themes than adventures in space. Take civilised people away from their world, put them in another world that is limited and self-contained. Take away their hope and what happens? Lord of the Flies meets Alien – or something. The entire story is anchored on Jonsson's Mimaroben and it is to her credit that this anchor is strong and firm and keeps you watching. The supporting cast are all strong and believable with no real heroes or villains although Arvin Kananian as the captain Chefone is a near as you get to this but even his character is placed in a very difficult situation and he never goes full on Sir Jasper Naughtybonce.

It would spoil the story to tell you how it progresses but it is no surprise to say that overall the feeling is bleak and downbeat and holds no great faith in human’s nature over the course of the situation. Being Swedish if you are offended by full frontal nudity, male and female, lesbian sex, orgies, and the odd willy bonging about in your face this is not the science fiction for you.

Existential, challenging, depressing, mesmerising and infuriating Aniara is certainly not your ordinary science-fiction story, in a way you could say it is very Swedish and whilst I can see why some people would find it dull and lacking in an peril or action, why does it have to be I may ask, it strikes me as a film that if you watch it to the conclusion you will not forget it in a hurry.

Right who is up for starting an orgy club? No one? Okay off to Sweden I go.

The secret of Upgrade is not that it is an upgrade on a fairly standard ‘A.I. is not too happy’ science-fiction story but it is an upgrade on the attitude and application of the story by the screenwriter, actors, director and just about everyone else involved.

Filmed on the budget usually allocated to the stars onsite ‘never-to-be-used’ gym of most blockbusters the makers somehow managed to wring every ounce out of the value of the money. The ‘not too distant in the future’ visuals and science is impressive and is the glue that holds what is in all honesty a fairly hokey story together. Logan Marshall-Green is a fine Tom Hardy-a-like and funnily enough by not being Tom Hardy he does not have to play up to it so the performance is subdued and good. His former Power Ranger wife, Melanie Vallejo, is the motivational force so is not used to the full extent but the relationship, what you see of it, is affecting and most importantly believable.

So far so good. The story itself is not as original as much as it wants to be but as I have said when handled competently this does pale into insignificance. The twist ending is perhaps not as twisty as they like but is still a good moment to close the story and give the Blade Runner, Mad Max, Death Wish and a dozen other films in the mix a nice tidy finish.

Upgrade is hokum but fine grade hokum wrapped in fun, gore and poignancy, the acting is good throughout although it would be nice to see the standard ‘Tech Genius’ being more of a normal person because the character used in Upgrade is well-worn. The special effects and future-world gimmicks are devised and executed very well and add to the overall feel of the story’s world. As the story progresses this gives more heft to the technology that drives us along. All good.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, a tight budget forces makers and production companies to be creative and the results often puts blockbusters to shame, and of course not being able to explode buildings and have hordes of CGI baddies being mown down means more character-driven scenes and more character development.

Like I said – all good.

The set-up is interesting and different enough to grab the average viewers attention. A Danish immigrant to the US awaits the rival of his wife from Denmark, having been in the harsh West for 7 years on his own. So far so good. Then have your hero being played by the enigmatic magnetic presence of Mads Mikkelsen and double that up with his brother, Mikael Persbrandt, both survivors the Second Schleswig War and you have an interesting and new twist on your traditional Oat Opera.

What we get for our money is the senseless slaughter of innocents so that the protagonist has a just motivation for his slaughter. Very, very, film western. We are then treated to very bad man in charge who seemingly enjoys murdering people willy-nilly for mainly money reasons and we are away. From this point on if you have watched more than two Westerns you know what is coming and how the film ends and so it does. This is the film’s biggest failing.

You have beautiful cinematography using South African vistas to reproduce the desolate and harsh west to impressive effect with atmospheric and haunting skies and lighting tying into the action on screen. Add to this, the aforementioned accomplished Danish actors and the ever consistent Johnathan Pryce, Jeffery Dean Morgan, the underrated and underused Eric Cantona and the wonderfully expressive, luckily for her, Eva Green, heroically eye-brow acting, which she is nails easily, but I feel she done dirty in this role. Give someone as sublime and such a screen personality as her something to say for goodness sake.

The very atmospheric music is produced by Kasper Winding channelling The Last of Us’ Gustavo Santaolalla to such a point I kept expect Joel to pop up and get murdered senselessly but as similar as it seems it works perfectly. Jeffery Dean Morgan proves that his screen persona is pantomime baddy has his character that audience must hate is so bad, so ‘evil’ it borders on comedy parody and as much as I enjoyed the film every time he spoke or did anything on screen it had a tendency to make me laugh or at best hiss and boo. Much more convincing was Eric Cantona as his number two, who with a few lines at best was left to portray character with looks and posture. Less is more and in some ways at the least the Corsican had more shades in there rather than just wearing a big black hat.

The plot is nothing you have not seen before time and time again, starting in Japan and culminating with Sergio Leone we really need a new angle something fresh. When Leone brought the world the ‘Spaghetti Western’ he was trying to move on from the clean-shaven hero/baddy format with unshaven, unkempt, gunmen, blood, death and double crossing. It was not new but it was in your face and sufficiently different enough to stimulate the imagination of the cinema going public. In particular the motivation for the senseless murder and destruction is disappointingly trite and vanilla and also if just thought about for a few seconds collapses under the preposterousness.

Unfortunately The Salvation, whilst worth a viewing just due to the actors on display, is another slightly more modern version of the Spaghetti format. The story is, dare I say, melodramatic and somewhat simplistic, almost childish, none more so than Jeffery Dean Morgan’s set to 11 villain, and this detracts tremendously from the attempt at a western. It is not different enough to get excited about.

Chapter Two comes in at over three hours long. For what the story brings to you, the way it is paced and presented this is way too long. There is a lot of flashback padding a device that a lot of story-tellers like to use nowadays but something I feel is quite often unnecessary. The device of collecting their individual 'items' or totems to defeat Pennywise that has to be completed on their own, seems to be lifted from a video game and makes little sense other than to create horrifying scenes to scare the audience. For a supernatural killing machine Pennywise or 'It' is singularly crap at killing these individual adults who fall for his tricks every single time despite knowing what he is all about, he has no problems with other people though.

Pennywise is in fact a big problem for me. Brought to life with an enthusiastic unpleasantness by Bill Skarsgård like many movie villains he seems particularly inept in crucial moments and then deadly and all-powerful in others. In Chapter Two he is so poor at killing the protagonists who are already terrified of him, he feeds on fear, then he helps Henry Bowers, Stephen Kings stock psycho-bully, from the first film now an adult and in......shock again...a mental hospital, to escape to murder his 'Losers' enemies. Henry turns out to be dab squib, he was in the book if I remember properly and is fairly easily disposed of, I was never sure of his purpose in the story, even more so in the film. Pennywise is so cartoonish that he becomes a slightly more deadly version of Sideshow Bob but also is at poor at getting his tormentors as Sideshow Bob is. It just is not scary.

Andy Muschietti treats us to little glimpses of the films that he has liked in the past and whilst some film-loving viewers will enjoy this I personally felt it was cack-handed. In the original book Pennywise takes the form of films or popular culture figures that the kids would be terrified of, so Michael Landon's 'Teenage Werewolf' and so forth, the film-makers removed this aspect as they felt modern audiences would not get the references. Instead we get other references, not to do with the modus operandi of It that some modern viewers 'won't get'. Odd choice I think.

A running joke throughout the film is James McAvoy's Stephen King avatar, is constantly being told his stories have bad endings and he cannot write them. He's even told by Stephen King himself in another cameo yuk, yuk. The funny thing is It both in book and film form and in this incarnation rather prove the point. The ending, and in particular Pennywise's demise is poor and a letdown. From that point on the reconciliation of the 'Losers' is handled better but so many questions are swept under the carpet. People could not have forgotten which is hinted at is the power of It because It was dead. So there is a lot of destruction, death and mayhem that appears to have never really been explained.

It: Chapter Two is longer and weaker than Chapter One but is entertaining enough to watch but the real problem is the length, scope and themes of the story. This large Stephen King novel with multiple storylines, characters and time periods is really best suited for a multi-part TV series, which of course was created to reasonable effect back in 1990.

The film is okay but it's not all it.

Clever ain't I?

As Jack Black says in the Blu-Ray extras due to the amount of money Jumanji In the Jungle made he knew he was ‘going to get a call’ and that in nutshell is why this sequel exists, making money. This in itself does not make the film bad or poor but purely from a lover of films point of view it is disappointing.

All the same cast return with added Danny DeVito, playing the same role Danny DeVito plays now, frankly it is good and he can do it with his eyes closed and Danny Glover more or less in his comfort zone playing a role he can do with his eyes closed also. The writers had to find a reason for the game to still exist, it was scrapped in the first film, and why anyone would go back into it. Spencer is the character chosen to start it all off again but by a sad sack, again. So far, all good.

The story zips along with the fun and exciting pace of the first film, Rory McCann being the standout as a fine baddie, and everyone has fun doing impressions of their actor colleagues with varying degrees of success, some inhabit the character and seem to be that person in a different avatar whereas others just do a good Mike Yarwood impression, I’m looking at you Awkwafina.

I laughed at the run time and had fun but overall, the feeling I was getting was ‘I’ve seen this before, and only recently’. The actors, particularly the youngsters who transform into the ‘star-actors’ give the impression of being good friends and lively happy young adults, a weird way to put it but this aspect of the film made me smile.

The effects and cinematography are good, the fun parts are fun and the peril in general is perilous even if you know the outcome before the film even starts. I felt that the makers were trying to shoe-horn too many people in with SeaPlane (Colin Hanks/Nick Jones) returning, one thinks would he really go back into something he’d been in for 20 years, and as mentioned the veteran actors and Awkwafina added to the mix. I am not sure it was needed and I am not convinced it worked. Having said that I did not think a sequel was needed.

Jumanji: The Next Level is a fun romp but all too familiar and not different or interesting enough from the original. It tries to make some vague points about keeping friends, reconciliation and so forth but nothing that you have not seen before albeit worse and better.

From the ending sequence the makers clearly want to make Jumanji: Not Again and it will probably happen. Therein lies the problem with film making for major studios today.

Oh, and Lilith turns up at the end without her hair in a tight bun. I do not watch a lot of US TV, so I have not seen Bebe Neuwirth for a long time and it was nice to see her in a little cameo.

The Next Level, watch it, enjoy it, do not remember it a day later.