Film Reviews by LW

This is deliriously blood soaked fun if you like tongue in cheek gore. Like the previous Terrifier films there is a mix of genuine menace, knowing daftness and wildly over the top old school practical FX gore. Art is as malevolent as in his earlier appearances and the series develops its supernatural lore for the killer clown nicely. If you liked Childs Play or The Evil Dead and their respective sequels and outrageous television outings, then you'll like this. If you aren't into killer clowns, 80s syth styled credit music, Tom Savini cameos and maniacallly contrived gore effects then you won't like this. If a bit of old school splatter with a comedy carol number is what you are after then this is for you. That Terrifier carol gets it up to five stars for me!

This is a ponderous apocalyptic fantasy of the sort that appeals to people who want to try and survive an apocalypse but wouldn't last an hour if we dumped them in the DRC. A group of photo journalists covering a stylised fantasy of a near future American Civil War set out on a road trip to interview the doomed President in Washington and encounter lots of tropes and forced meaningful images along the way. There is something really unpleasant about a film whose underlying take seems to be that suffering and horror aren't relatable unless they are a first world play fantasy in the style of The Walking Dead.

Like everything Alex Garland writes this takes an interesting idea for a film and then does nothing with it. I don't see a commentary about a divided America or anything topical at all. This is just another post apocalyptic road trip fantasy. It just feels empty of purpose beyond its narrative. There is endless meaningful imagery and motifs but no actual meaning. There are no clues as to why this Civil War started, no clues as to what the sides stand for, every set piece is contrived and borrowed from better films and series and the combat scenes are ludicrously badly staged. The climax at the end sees staggeringly improbable use of military equipment that even Michael Bay would shy away from.

The focus on war photography might have had some symbolic value, but, as there doesn't seem to be anything to symbolise there is no point. A war without a point or where nobody knows which faction is theirs or where the audience is clueless as to what sort of victory they just saw at the end makes an excellent idea for a near future sci fi tale. The problem is that I think these might be my attempt to salvage a lesson from the story rather than anything Garland actually wanted to convey. This is just a lot of pretty bland that looks pretty and that nicks its best stuff from other films, books and series. The best part is spotting just how much of is taken from somewhere else where a writer actually had a message to convey.

I've never read the book but I can say that the film is a leaden handed tale of rapacious colonisation and exploitation of the buffalo herds of the American west. There are a few nods to Moby Dick and other far better Westerns, like Culpepper Cattle Company, in a simple narrative of a young man from back east joining forces with an obsessive hunter (Nicholas Cage doing manic stares). The story plods, the buffalo get shot, annoying string instruments muffle the dialogue in attempt to build an atmosphere and then nothing happens. I mean nothing. Thet shoot buffalo, sit round a fire, grumble, someone gets murdered, someone dies in an accident and the buffalo hides are ultimately worthless. There is less a plot than an overlong meander through symbolic events and clumsy camera work and none of it goes anywhere.

There is a patronising bit of text in the end credits about Indian tribes that is the typical one dimensional stuff about traditional cultures and harmony with nature. It turns out shooting buffalo may be exciting but is bad, but this film might as well be bad because it is dull.

I say in advance that I went into this with low expectations and found it genuinely daft and charming. The concept was loosely lifted from an ancient t.v. series but shares a title with it and not much else.

The plot follows a stuntman who, having suffered a disasterous injury, cut himself off from his career and the love of his life. A mysterious request from the agent of the mega star he used to double for sees him travel to Australia to track down the missing actor, save his ex's debut film and win her back whilst staying one step ahead of the bad guys. There's lots of daft slapstick and stuntwork and if you want to be charmed by its fluffy sense of fun then you will be. It actually reminded me of Romancing the Stone in its tonal blending of action set pieces, one liners and flirting leads. If you are in the mood for smiling, silly and action then you should find this passes the time nicely.

This a pretty straightforward thriller that ticks the boxes for the rape revenge thriller and the 'rich people hunt others for sport' genres. Despite an infantilising 'trigger warning' at the start there is little shocking on display. The gimmick is that the victims are being drugged to forget their abuse on the seemingly idyllic private island of a sinister tech billionaire. An implausible remembering scenario triggers a round of mundane retributive violence and there's a smug twist at the end. The build up of menace is nice but this is too heavy handed to be insightful social commentary, too predictable and sure of itself to be thrilling, not darkly funny enough to be a satire and nowhere near brutal enough for the schlock fan. It is efficient, slick and forgettable.

It is hard to believe that there has been a quarter of a century of Bad Boys. Only Michael Bay could have said the original film belonged to his earlier restrained period. This latest installment exudes the same explosive daftness, the same preposterous drug cartel fighting antics and the frantic caricature performances of Lawrence and Smith. The two heroes are showing their age and focus on the profanity laden back and forth bickering that makes the films so watchable. The more physical action is left to the younger cast. This is slick action comedy and, when Bay runs out of new things to blow up he sends in a giant albino alligator.

The first film was an entertaining creature feature and the sequel amped up the action. This prequel has no clear idea of what it is about. It doesn't offer any clues as to what the monsters are or why modern firepower couldn't stop them. We get a street level view in the style of Cloverfield in the form of a terminally ill poet who gets stranded in New York and goes looking for pizza. This character is insipid and meets some equally wet blankets along the way. Luckily she has her cat in tow or there would be nobody to root for. The set pieces are few and formulaic and tension never builds. The central character doesn't get her pizza and decides that life isn't worth living. Much like the audience. It wants to be evocative and poignant but it feels forced and trite with the whole thing an excuse for some cgi cityscapes. The monsters remain as elusive as the point of this snooze fest

This murky offbeat thriller is halfway grim, halfway tongue in cheek and won't be everyone's taste. The basic premise sees a junior FBI Agent assigned to help an investigation into a 25 year old series of murder suicides linked by coded notes. The puzzle is who or what is the connection? This is certainly a tale of the demonic but, unlike a lot of the genre, it isn't American fan fiction for the bible or a straight up monster. Longlegs is a moody retro thriller set in the late 90s with a focus on events in the 1970s, the latter an excuse to use T-Rex on the soundtrack. The disconcertingly wide angle camera work, eerie landscapes, darkened searches of barns and autumnal season set the mood. The whole thing makes you nostalgic for The X-Files and has hints of Silence of the Lambs and 90s David Lynch. There are no jump scares, just a deep sense of unease at the unexplained and some nervous laughter at Nicholas Cage's demented titular killer. Cage is kept in the background until the final third of the film and he leaves the audience with more questions than answers. The film ends with predictably mean twist and an ambiguous cut to credits. This feels very like if Nicholas Cage had been the monster of the week in a classic X-Files episode and it is excellent fun if that appeals to you. Hail Satan!

All three seasons of this show have been fantastic schlock comedy. The whole cast are great and the characters are well defined, the dialogue sparkles with in jokes and nobody is entirely unsympathetic. The centre of the show is obviously the voice of Brad Dourif as the gleefully lethal doll and he's matched by Jennifer Tilly doing deranged dialled up to ten in heels. Each season has done a different set of genre tropes, first the high school slasher, second the 'boarding school full of special children' and lastly 'Action movies about US Presidents'. Chucky burns the US government to the ground, finally meets his dark voodoo god and nukes Santa. Sadly the show got axed on a cliffhanger twist, so we'll have to hope Don Mancini gets funding for another big screen outing!

This is a slice of lunatic satire and sorority slasher that has a feel like one of the better Troma classics. The joke that sloths are just pretending to be slow and adorable is suitably bonkers and it starts from there. Even by the standards of the genre the sorority girls are unspeakable caricatures heading for fluffy annihilation. The satire element being that the pursuit of social media fame drives the girls to get an illegal sloth and that, in turn, the sloth learns to emulate them, eventually getting an online following with #killersloth as it posts its kills. The moral being that social media can turn even a cuddly jungle creature into a monster. The sloth is an adorable puppet, the action slapstick daftness and it breezes by at a nice pace. Highly entertaining as a gore comedy.

Saying this is a straight forward Western plot with no frills doesn't do it justice. The cast breathe new life into old archetypes and Nicholas Cage perfectly pitches the doomed and world weary demeanour of the gunslinger out for revenge. Ryan Kiera Armstrong is a watchable foil as Cage's young daughter and the storytelling catches the character's autism without any jarring exposition that disrupts the lean plot. There is a good nutty villain and assorted henchmen and a doughty Marshal on hand to see that Justice gets a look in. The other thing is that the costume department have some excellent natural fabrics and hand made clothing that makes for a touch of extra immersion. It feels like watching a low budget 1950s Western, but in a good way. The Old Way is simple, uncomplicated fun that holds your attention through the 90 minutes. This really is a lot better than the Rotten Tomatoes critics score suggests and the audience scores seem to have been rightly more sympathetic.

This is not the whole film let alone the 2007 remaster! It is one side of an old 2 sided disc. Really disappointed.