Film Reviews by AER

I left it too long to get around to watching Hellraiser. I should have watched this as an impressionable teenager. Now in my late 40s, it was all a bit little bit silly.

Clive Barker's debut film is very imaginative in with its visuals and easy-to-peel puzzle box, it falls down with the performances which are larger stilted - also, the script is all surface and isn't very good at all. So, it gets 2 stars purely for the 'look' and the really good practical effects - some of which are still impressive by comparison to what we're seeing in low-budget horror today in 2022. Points for Doug Bradley as Pinhead! He gets too talkative in a later films, in this film he still had mystery! An instant icon.

If only Hellraiser had good actors and a good script, it could have been something truly scary and awesome. It's neither.

3 out of 10

...it was still enjoyable. The plot has been done a million times before so there's no real reason for this female-led riff on Mission Impossible or The Bourne Identity... The action sequences are good but this film belongs in the early 2000s. It never aspires to be anything more than an expensive in-flight movie.

4 out of 10

Strewth, this comedy-horror from Australia follows in the footsteps of Black Sheep, whereas it works better in the funny bits than scary ones. The parts of the film set in the pub where the dodgy locals exchange stupid stories about a deadly monster pig in the bush are very funny, everything else is pretty shonky. Dodgy acting from the principal cast is only highlighted when the older pros like Ernie Dingo (The Fringe Dwellers), Chris Haywood (The Cars That Ate Paris), Steve Bisley (Mad Max), and from nominal lead John Jarratt (Wolf Creek / Picnic at Hanging Rock) turn up and show the rest how its done.

The action-scenes are long and repetitive, but the creature effects are pretty good. All-in-all, this is a Friday night throwaway and it should have been a lot more fun. 10 minutes of funny banter save this from being unwatchable....

2 out of 10

Although it's interesting to learn about the journey of Golden Age Rembrandt paintings in private collections, this documentary has no inner-life and didn't really enlighten me. It had fleeting moments of interest like the sections where the restorations and authentication tests were taking place, however, the constant preening of Jan Six dominated the documentary and all the money-grabbing controversy coverage was off-putting. More interesting were the philanthropists and the potential war between the Rijks and the Louvre when a pair of rare pieces came up for sale. It was a bit of a trudge as the drama was there, it's just the spotlight was cast upon the most uninteresting of the subjects. You could almost forget the focus of the documentary was supposed to be on Rembrandt and his art, and not the creepy, simpering Jan Six.

2 out of 10 - An expose of back-stabbing art-dealers in Amsterdam and beyond that focuses on ugly people and not beautiful paintings.

I haven't seen The Fly since 1989 on video and I was so grossed out I never went back until now. Nowadays, I have a stronger stomach and I have seen quite a few David Cronenberg films to be drawn back in.... After all these years, it's still astonishing from a creature FX POV. Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis are both excellent, even though the script is whiffy - the plot is also overly simplistic and it could have done with a longer running time because Seth Brundle's (Goldblum) decline is too rapid to drum up real sympathy or horror.

Unlike so many other big 80s films, The Fly still works its magic where it counts.

6 out of 10

School! Who needs to relive school years? Even if you were vaguely popular, nobody's life peaked at school - it was never a high point. So here we have an amiable, utterly relatable story about an American eight-grader on the cusp of teenagerdom. It's a sensitively played if ultimately slight drama that benefits from excellent performances and an astute script. Well-played.

7.5 out of 10 - excellent if not all that memorable

Cool rethink of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers without the gooey SFX. A woman designs a plant that releases a pathogen to make us feel happier. The plant gets smart and evolves to ensure that humans keep them alive (because they cannot replicate organically). It's quite chilling and well-acted, but like those infected by Little Joe, something wasn't quite right. Did the plant just alter personalities to make people happier as was the design, or was everything all in the mind of the characters? Who knows? A film that keeps you at arm's length by design or by mistake, you decide. I'm on the fence.

5 out of 10

This new interpretation of JM Barrie's Peter Pan succeeds where others have flunked because of its level of visual freestyling and the high quality of child acting. It's an amazing free-spirited remix that gets to the heart of being a child and it's done in a way we can all identify with. When you're as old as I am you realise that the golden period of being young is actually so fleeting, really short (10 - 15 measly years!)

This is a new film that didn't really get a wide cinema release in UK, but everyone should check it out because it's so different from the crap that Hollywood pump out these days. Well, worth a look. It's a 12 certificate, so tweenies may like it too...

The trailer is magical.... Give it a spin.

8 out of 10

This promises to be the last film about 'The Essex Boys' and I'm happy with that. These films offer a morbid curiosity into the weirdly boring legend of Pat Tate, Tony Tucker, and Craig Rolfe. Actor/producer Terry Stone has left no 'stone' unturned in this five film series that has employed just about every British actor (at the shallow pay-to-play end of the pool) and I'm not sure I believe anybody when they say this series has abated. Mediocre acting, repetitive scenes, and a long running time make this a fait-a-complis. If you are still watching by the fifth film, like I am, you've got yourself to blame, Terry Stone and his mates are only fulfilling an appetite that they think exists - they are business men. It's still doo-doo.

1.5 out of 10 - Rise of the zzzzz

Something failed to spark in this reimagining of the Punch and Judy story - I'm not sure why I didn't click with it, but maybe I don't like fairy tales. it reminded me of Red Riding Hood or The Brothers Grimm - the acting and set production evoked thase two films for me. Well-acted, the story doesn't aim to provide us with anything interesting. Made in Australia, I could hear wavy accents all over the place. Sorry, this one felt flat.

3 out of 10

Resident Evil - Welcome to Racoon City only seems to exist to make the first series of films starring Milla Jovovich look better. I've seen all of those ones and there was something strangely watchable about them, maybe Milla Jovovich's gravitas and the variety of monsters and settings (alongside some snappy dialogue). This reboot has a few good SFX but on the whole its a lazy, sloppy retread made on a much lower budget. No imagination has been applied to making this; the script consists of everyone saying 'What the f*ck?' every five seconds (literally).... It's a cut-n-paste script. From reading other reviews, the director has made something closer to the game by recreating scenes, settings and POV shots, so there maybe something salvageable for gamers - but I'm more a fan of the old films....

Most disappointing of all is that it's boring - by reintroducing game/name characters like Clare Redfield and Wesker played by vacant actors, this is DOA. Let's hope this one is forgotten about quickly and no sequels ordered from above.

Rancid and avoidable.

Minus 1 out of 10

Ray Burdis returns with a pitiful comedy that features many of the cast of Quadrophenia. Leaning heavily into mod culture, this is a shoddy rush job which is unfunny, badly acted and an embarrassment for all concerned. It's very amateurish compared to Burdis' The Wee Man, and even his older films like Love, Honour and Obey... One to avoid like roadkill for dinner.

0.5 out of 10

Will Smith and the stunning tennis on offer are the reasons to see this. Surrounded by a fantastic ensemble cast playing his family which includes Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton as two of the greatest tennis players of all time, Serena and Venus Williams. Aujane Ellis plays the mother of this outstanding family in a biopic the details the lengths her husband, Richard Williams will go to ensure their daughters (all five) have a much better shot at life than he ever had. It's stirring stuff as Will Smith doesn't portray RIchard as an likeable man - he's mercenary and calculated to the exclusion of much else except for a shining love for his family. It's the performances and the characterisation that elavtes this above the standard sporting biopic. The end match seems to go on for about a day, making the film slow to halt at the end - another negative is that the dramatic score doesn't shut up for a second. Even Will Smith pouring a glass of milk gets an orchestra!

Good performances, but it's not going to change the way films like this are made. In that respect, it's quite pedestrian.

Watch it for Will. His very best role in years.

6 out of 10

Terry Gilliam's films are always chaotic. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is completely bonkers, visually amazing, and endlessly creative. I hadn't seen it before and loved every second of this utterly nuts cacophony of mad ideas, gargantuan sets and wild casting - John Neville, Sarah Polley, Robin Williams, Eric Idle, Jack Purvis, Uma Thurman, Oliver Reed, Jonathan Pryce, Bill Paterson, Sting!!, and Alison Steadman... Loved it.

Ghostbusters 4 - Afterlife may put the tormented souls of 2 and 3 to rest but this is because it plays a very safe game - It's 100 % fan service. So well-versed are Hollywood-execs at producing films that answer to internet speculation and spoiler-addicted fans, this Ghostbusters entry offers the viewer nothing new. Imagine Super-8 (or Stranger Things) thrown into a blender with Ghostbusters 1 and you're there (and you've probably used about the same amount of imagination as the execs who created this). In playing it safe, the film is actually entertaining and occasionally funny. It's light entertainment and has some fab SFX - it's streets better than Ghostbuster 2 and 3, so at least this does well to re-align the series and make it watchable. The first film casts a very long shadow over this one, and as a consequence, it will end up being fairly unmemorable which is a shame because the error teaser trailer promised us something a bit deeper, a bit more interesting, and like the original something unique. To these ends it barely scrapes a pass mark.

5.5 out of 10