Film Reviews by AER

By far, Saw 7 - The Final Chapter is the worst of the sequels. It's only a bit better than SPIRAL (Chris Rock's fan-made spin-off). It ends up chasing its tail creating polt holes galore in its wake. What promised to sew up the original run of films forever just left us with more impossible questions to answer. The return of key played Dr Gordon (Cary Elwes) is a waste of time and doesn't add any intrigue and there's no reason for Hoffman's endless psychotic bloodbath. Vol.7 killed the franchise of with bad acting, no new ideas and a thin plot. Jigsaw was better (purer) and Saw X was something of a return to form after the low points of 5, 6, and 7 (maybe 8) and SPIRAL....

Saw bore

Sadly, I'm going to follow the crowd and agree by saying a potentially great idea is squandered by a (usually) talented cast. Watching the one-at-a-time line delivery of the actors (at times) was excruciating. It was a film of unfunny monologues and lame twists. It was like a fanmade LOCK STOCK and TWO SMOKING BARRELS - no flare, no verve, no feeling for quality or entertainment value. The standout was the stalwart Tim McInnerny, but even he was wasted. I stuck it through to the ending but I regret it.

Lousy.

This was a very solid movie bolstered by great acting and an interesting story. Unconvincing plot turns marred the narrative: a black cop turns a blind eye and lets them escape at one point, they run out of petrol twice - 1st time a ride shows up right away on a lonely road, 2nd time, they come across a filling station at the exact right moment, - other tiny contrivances scupper what could have been more interesting if the random nature of life had led the way. Can't fault the acting and it was watchable, raising awareness of how different the USA and the UK are in some respects but all too similar in others.

A poignant tale of a woman who longs to see a mulberry tree that stood on her family's plot of land. It is the only living thing in her family that stood against the expulsion of her family and so many others from their homes in Palestine when the Balfour Declaration came into effect. Since childhood Fadia has lived in a permanent refugee camp over the border in Lebanon, just 15 minutes from her old village but she is unable to cross the border. It's a sad tale, one full of wistfulness and hope. Fadia makes friends with a British documentary filmmaker who sets off in search of her tree with very little concrete fact to go on.

There is also an interesting parallel story of birdwatchers and wild migratory birds who have no need for borders.

Interesting, heavy emotions, and worth a look to see a very human story to focus on as Israel and Palestine are at war in 2023.

This Guy Ritchie film is needlessly complicated. The framing of a simple revenge tale isn't the only thing that scuppers this potentially interesting Jason Statham starrer; what also ruined it is a poor script, flat characters and a miscast Statham. Nothing convinced me and everything felt laboured. The action sequences were slick but you had to wait 90 minutes for anything thrilling to happen. None of the cast seemed comfortable with a ropey script, I pitied Josh Hartnett who is just terrible in this. Eddie Marsan and Andy Garcia both struggle with weird accents too. So there's not much to say except the makers decided to build a maze in the middle of a very common or garden plot. Needed a better script and better performances (actors) for this to have worked. Even Den of Thieves and Ambulance were way better than this. PS: Wrath of Man was robbed of a cinema release in the UK because of the Covid epidemic...

This came out during Nicolas Cage's wilderness years that began with Bangkok Dangerous and ended around the time Jiu Jitsu came out. A few blips aside like JOE and BAD LIEUTENANT 2, NC's films were largely toilet duck. This stands head and shoulders above many of NC's films including the recent Renfield and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and I'm sad I ignored it all these years thinking it was wack (like Sorcerer's Apprentice or Willy's Wonderland). This psychedelic revenge flick is aces - high is style and contains great performances. An interesting cast including Linus Roache (son of Ken Barlow from Corrie) and Andrea Riseborough. I loved the cameo from Bill Duke (PREDATOR) too! Inspired, f***** horrible, and brings something original to a well-worn plot model. A bit slow paced for action / horror fiends perhaps but I wasn't at all troubled by that.

8 out of 10 - Horrrrrrrible.

Talk To Me comes with a lot of hype as 2023's most inventive and scary horror film. Whilst it's an effective chiller with a good degree of momentum to its plot, it doesn't have much to offer that I haven't seen elsewhere. Essentially, this is OUIJA in Australia. Unsympathetic and stupid characters populate Talk To Me, and there are a few plot holes which made me wonder, what's so special about this one? It's more gory than scary too. Mind you, if you're after a fast moving horror on a Saturday night, you can do a lot worse.

5 out of 10

Christopher Nolan definitely got better at making films (to state the obvious). I've seen a lot of low-budget British indie films and this is MOR when compared to some gems out there. It's taken me a long time to come and seek out Following, I'm glad I've seen it. Great end twist aside this is let down by uncertain and flat performances from a game cast. A curio nonetheless but pretty poor. There were quantum leaps made in quality when compared to Nolan's next film, Memento.

How he got a shot in Hollywood based on Following is a mystery, as it really isn't anything special.

2 out of 10

Set-bound with theatre-style acting of the broader kind, The Outfit suffers from uncertain performances, strange continuity errors, and a wordy script. Mark Rylance leads an interesting ensemble of American and British actors (with shakey American accents), and whilst it is watchable, it is essentially a filmed stage play. It's not remotely cinematic and the twisty plot isn't at all convincing or plausible. Characters stand around listening to others villainous or moral reasons for their motivations when a fast gun would have made it all a bit easier to swallow. I'm not a fan of Mark Rylance (who overracts) or Johnny Flyyn (who's always a bit wooden), so I found them distracting. Also Zooey Deutch's role was thin, and she was miscast. Sorry, I love period gangster movies but this one didn't work.

3.5 out of 10

Patricio Guzman's potentially fascinating documentary that blends subjects as wides as the extraterrestrial origins of water, Pinochet's reign of murderous terror, and the genocide against Chile's indigenous tribes of the South over the centuries. As a gateway to gleaning stories and information, The Pearl Button is a good start but at an hour and 18 minutes long, this packs too much in and you only get a mood flavour as opposed to a focused message.

Not arf! This made-for-TV film is a funny fossil. I saw it in the 90s at some point when the BBC was replaying a lot of these 'play for today' kind of TV movies. Better in the memory than today, the style of acting and delivery is that of Only Fools and Horses and On The Buses. It's not very sophisticated but once upon a time, I found this hilarious, which is the reason I looked it up. It doesn't stand up well enough as a timeless classic but it is fun if you want to see London how it was in the 70s, and to revisit a film that probably won't get streamed or even remembered in another few years. It stars old TV.Movie staples like NIGEL HAWTHORNE, MICHAEL ELPHICK, MAUREEN LIPMAN, GILLIAN TAYLFORTH, DAVID RYALL, JONATHAN LYNN, and in the lead the all-but-forgotten MICK FORD (SCUM and HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING).... WRITTEN by Jack Rosenthal (LONDON'S BURNING) and directed by BOB BROOKS (SPACE 1999)....

From the same team that made CUBE, this Canadian sci-fi has a lot of interesting ideas and ramps up the intrigue enough to keep you guessing the outcome. Jeremy Northam and Lucy Liu lead the cast in this twist on the Simulacrum theory that also spawned The Matrix and Dark City. However, it doesn't quite stick the landing, and as it's quite a low-budget film, the ambition outreaches the abilities of the SFX team. It's very watchable but the conclusion is very corny and inevitable. Shame it didn't save enough of its originality for the final stretch.

Recommended for those that love small sci-fis with big ideas. It's better acted than Cube, but perhaps not quite as dynamic.

6 out of 10

I saw this on release at the cinema and over the intervening years so many people have asked me if I've seen it. It's a real small-scale gem of the type of film we see get made so rarely anymore. The cast is great especially Peter O'Toole (in his last cinema role?) Dog lovers will fall in love with the way the script and performances skewer what's great about being dog and the way it tunes into a dogs head space with out anthromorphosising it. Sam Neill is expert in this. It's a delight to see actors that you don't see all that often anymore in funny and rewarding roles like Bryan Brown, Judy Parfitt, Art Malik, Ramon Tikaram, and even Jeremy Northam (where's he gone?)

Great gentle fun for dog lovers. Some might find it old hat and too quaint.

9 out of 10

This reminded me of Cronenberg's adaptation of Naked Lunch in tone and its depiction of shady government agencies. Its situation in Greece also reminded me of Interzone/Morocco. I loved the ideas of future eroticism and the accelerated evolving human bodies on show and the also the mutation of celebrity and art. teeming with ideas and otherworldliness, I don't think I'd have been ready for this when I was a younger person. But this is peak Cronenberg, only he can pull off something this fresh and original. I thoroughly enjoyed it and expect it will improve on further watches. It was gory, and almost like an arthouse version of Saw without the vindictive/pious serial killer.

Recommended but it s clearly not for everybody, not even for all Cronenberg fans.

8 out of 10

Who would've thought that the 11th Saw film would be amongst the very best of the sequels. I may even be the best sequel. Just when it looked like it was all out of ideas, they made Spiral with big stars. It was a disaster and came across as a fan-made fart of a film... Saw X thinks outside the box and gives us something different (whilst still containing the gory traps that are central to the film). Somehow, they;ve made Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) semi-sympathetic by making his victims even worse than he is (by miles). But the film's strength lies in plain sight, it gives the most intriguing charcter, Jigsaw, centre stage. And Tobin Bell is a fine actor, and he recognises that this is his turn to shine.

It's a shame that the film kind of conks out towards the end and the pay-off hinges on coincidences rather than mapped out plans. But given that this is set between Saw 1 & 2, Jigsaw and Amanda were still early in the game and prone to making mistakes. They just claim everything went to plan at the end... even after they lost control of their captives. An interesting sequel. Not without it's faults, it's still very entertaining and stands out from the pack. Definitely an improvement on Spiral, that's for sure.

5.5 out of 10