EL CAMINO is a decent epilogue to BREAKING BAD, but is far from the essential viewing its forbear was. Essentially Vince Gilligan has crafted an indulgently extended episode that ties up what few loose ends remained from the rise and fall of Heisenberg’s empire, and you could quite happily watch two or three key scenes from this and leave it at that. Aaron Paul is reliable ballast to build a new story on, but the story itself is missing BB’s scope and thematic richness, though perhaps appropriately the whole thing is really about seeing how different, how much better a man Jesse Pinkman is than Walter White, even under the most trying of circumstances. Expect moving cameos in flashback, gallows humour and Badger and Skinny Pete (Matt Jones and Charles Baker) stealing the show all over again. SSP
Review in Brief: El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)
Review: Ready or Not (2019)
Her “something borrowed” is the ammo belt: Mythology Entertainment/Vinson Films
READY OR NOT is a good really time at the movies. No, it’s not revelatory or particularly groundbreaking or the next big thing, it’s just good and a whole lot of fun.
As tradition dictates, any new member of the wealthy La Domas boardgaming dynasty must play a game. Grace (Samara Weaving) chooses poorly and ends up playing the deadliest game of hide and seek around the family mansion, her in-laws armed to the teeth and in hot pursuit.
Co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett really want you to know that they know their way around the horror genre. From an impressive opening tracking shot through the film’s primary location of a classic Gothic mansion, establishing the geography and atmosphere of the wider story from the off, to confident pacing and knowing manipulation of horror tropes throughout, they pull it off. There’s also some real acidic wit to the script from Guy Busick and Ryan Murphy here, usually in mocking lines delivered by the quite terrifying Aunt Helene (Nicky Guadagni): “Brown-haired niece, you continue to exist” or more veiled-menacing threats by mother-in-law Becky (Andie MacDowell, great to see you again!).
While it is genuinely terrifying when the La Domas clan tool up and give chase, not all killer family members are made equal. One is off her proverbials on “prescription” pills and is equally likely to off unlucky maids and fellow hunters with an itchy trigger finger, another unlucky enough to given a crossbow in the ancient weapon lottery takes a tactical break in the bathroom to YouTube how to use it.
I much preferred the devious setup of Ready or Not, where you have absolutely no idea what direction or tangent it will take to the all-out splatterhouse it becomes. As silly as it sounds when talking about a slasher movie I didn’t like it as much when all subtlety went out of the window.
Speaking of all-out splatterhouse, I would put money on this receiving higher certification was not to do with the amount of gore throughout but the manner in which characters die – not easily. It’s not always seeing every detail but hearing someone horribly gurgling through blood and gasping for life that stays with you.
Samara Weaving is a find, imbuing an otherwise quite formidable Grace with endearing physical tics, like catching herself still doing the exaggerated sneak mime she was doing messing around with her boyfriend (Mark O’Brien) a few scenes later when her life is in real jeopardy and snort-laughing at the most and extreme unexpected turn of events.
Also it’s amazing in horror quite how many heroines only stop running and fight back once they become that tired trope of the final girl. In Ready or Not and something like REVENGE last year, our protagonists start off fighting for their lives and never stop, and have a will and adaptability to survive using any means or nearby household objects necessary.
I loved how Grace’s wedding dress is designed by Avery Plewes in such a way to gradually transform into a battered suit of armour as she endures her war against the family. The bodice turns into a breastplate, the brocade to tattered chainmail and the bride to a warrior fighting for her very survival on the most unlikely of battlefields. If you ever feel like your first meet with your in-laws is going badly, take solace that no-one’s opened up the weapons cabinet.
Ready or Not won’t change your life but your watch time will fly by, and very enjoyably so. If I liked rollercoasters, I’d compare this to one – it’s a thrill-ride with mischief, style and striking performances to spare. SSP
Review in Brief: Arctic (2018/19)
What kind of a madman would star in both movies called POLAR and ARCTIC in the same year? A Mads-man, that’s who (excuse the pun, or don’t, I don’t care). Despite the etymologically similar titles they couldn’t be more different projects. This is THE REVENANT two centuries further on and with a different bear. In very few films are you genuinely convinced that the hero is going to die, but Arctic is definitely one of them. It would be nigh-on impossible to survive on your own stranded in the Arctic Circle but Overgård (Mads Mikkelsen) has to drag someone else around on a sledge for most of the movie as well. It’s taut and harsh and gritty, only giving in to some slight romanticising in the final stretch. Survival nuts will get a kick out of the attention to detail and the research put in, everyone else will be compelled by another quietly dignified powerhouse performance from Mikkelsen. SSP
Nightmare on Elm Street Films Ranked
The Farewell (2019) Review
Review in Brief: Knock Down The House
Why is American politics so fascinating? Because it’s a real event. KOCK DOWN THE HOUSE is also one hell of an underdog story. The ideal candidate, and the only one with any real chance of success against an entrenched New York incumbent is “An insurgent, outside, grassroots candidate that’s a woman of colour from the Bronx”. Oh only all those things? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have ended up the only giant-killer among this group of passionate, driven and talented women, but all of their stories are compelling. The documentary crew stick very close to their subjects so we end up seeing little of their opponents, but that’s forgivable in highlighting those without heavyweight promotions teams. It’s captivating and inspiring and an antidote to being disengaged in modern politics; it’s a promising sign of what might have been, and also what still might be in the not-too-distant future. SSP
Review: It Chapter Two (2019)
Smile like you mean it: KatzSmith Productions/New Line
Two years have just flown by haven’t they? The first IT floated high above all expectations and had pretty much everyone clamoring for more. CHAPTER TWO is good…but only just. Stephen King’s novel isn’t an easy one to adapt and part two of the Losers’ story is about as good as the same stretch in the book.
27 years after banishing shapeshifting fear-parasite Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) the grown up Losers, who have mostly moved away from Derry and moved on with their lives reconvene back home to destroy It once and for all.
Every adult Loser has no trouble at all convincing you they are the same children all grown up. I was convinced they must’ve shot the new scenes with the young Losers concurrently with the first film but they didn’t – incredibly they used de-aging effects on their teenage cast, which has to be a first. Despite some big names (James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain) the performance highlights are easily Eddie (James Ransone) and Richie (Bill Hader), much like last time with Jack Dylan Grazer and Finn Wolfhard, come to think of it. They do an interesting tweak to one character’s driving force as well, which, while not explicitly in the book, makes complete sense and adds a certain level of unexpected poignancy later on.
If there’s one thing I didn’t expect in this it’s a meta commentary on Stephen King as a writer. McAvoy’s Bill Denbrough is King’s self-insert character (they’re always writers with unfeasibly attractive wives or girlfriends) and he’s really successful despite the fact that everyone “didn’t like the ending” of pretty much everything he’s ever written.
The Chinese restaurant meeting and the scene with Mrs Kersh, the two most memorable scenes from the adults’ story in the book, are perfect, chilling and straight off the page. The discomfort and the creeping dread of the Mrs Kersh scene is especially effective and you’ve got to hand it to Joan Gregson’s skill at portraying that something’s more than a bit off with this seemingly kindly old lady with the subtlest of facial expression shifts and freezes. For me it was the scariest scene in the book and it’s one of the only genuinely frightening scenes in the film.
You always have to ask one thing of a horror film: is it scary? Frustratingly the answer here is no, not really. It’s handsomely moulded and fairly atmospheric, but the imagery won’t stay with you. Fear is tied so much better to character on a thematic level in the first film. Here it’s shallow, and aside from the natural fear of mortality, the Losers still seem affected by exactly the same generic spook-house stuff that frightened them as children. Pennywise really should have been morphing into mortgage statements and credit card bills.
Considering the runtime, surely there was room for more “rotten in Derry” scenes. A key part of It’s power is how he’s corrupted the whole town to its core over the centuries, how numbers of freak accidents, child disappearances and gruesome deaths have sky-rocketed. Aside from the ghastly homophobic attack at the beginning and some odd trance-like stares from the locals the film story’s primary location is missing this texture, this subtext.
This film could have been so much weirder. I wanted psychedelic sci-fi. I wanted trippy nightmare fuel. I wanted space turtles!
It: Chapter Two is solid. It just about makes up for a relative lack of scares with good performances throughout the cast and some entertainingly executed set pieces. All the money is up on screen and director Andy Muscietti still clearly loves this material, but with all the flashing back to events we saw last time you have to question whether it was worth splitting the film at all, whether one part of this story becomes redundant. SSP
Border (2018) Review
Review: Crawl (2019)
You skip cleaning the kitchen one week and look what happens!: Paramount/Raimi Productions
This was pretty gnarly, as the kids used to say (probably). We’ve seen so many varied creature features from the paranoid 1950s to the invention of the blockbuster in the 1970s and the low-fi efforts of the 2000s. CRAWL is of a piece with a lot of these but seems to get a lot more of the basics right that so many bafflingly get wrong.
Championship swimmer Haley (Kaya Scodelario) braves a ferocious hurricane to rescue her dad (Barry Pepper) who has become trapped in the crawlspace under his house as it floods and fills with alligators.
You can visualise the pitch meeting for Crawl pretty easily. “Hey! I’ve got a great idea for a movie! What if you were trapped in a basement? Right, but what’s a lot worse than being trapped in a basement? Being trapped in a basement that’s flooding! Right, but what’s a lot worse than being trapped in a basement that’s flooding? Being trapped in a basement that’s flooding and there’s alligators! And not just one or two alligators but loads of them! I know, right? Mind blown!”.
It really doesn’t matter what shape of animal is chasing you in movies like this, the pertinent question is do you care if it catches our protagonists? A good old-fashioned strained father-daughter relationship works well enough, giving Haley and her dad ample time between saving their limbs to talk through their myriad issues works wonders.
Haley and her dad really are put through it, battered, beaten and bitten by the natural world until one of them is more tourniquet than person. Objectives and consequences of each stage of the escape are clearly set out, action set pieces are well-paced, punctuated with jumps and a fair few surprises that blindside you and the alligators themselves which look like a combination of CGI and puppets/animatronics mostly convince. I say mostly because there’s always that split-second transition between something practical and something computer animated that really jars.
The film is a tight 85 minutes and not a moment is wasted. Yes, extra characters are introduced later on purely to give the scaly hunters more to chew on (oh I wonder what might happen to the occupants of an overladen, rickety boat or that guy leaning over a dark cellar hatch?) but our two leads only have so many limbs they can lose. Also having a very cute dog on hand for you to hope for survival is a cheap trick to keep audiences engaged but you expect that with this sort of territory.
Creature features are completely reliant on the animal antagonists being far more aggressive and relentless than they would be in reality. What alligator wouldn’t give up after being stabbed in the eye? You also just have to check your brain and go with the rules of this world – don’t question blood loss rates or the fact that an alligator could out swim any human no matter how long they’ve spent in the pool. Yes, even if we’ve had an opening scene establishing just how much Haley has to prove, it doesn’t turn her into a mermaid at a convenient time.
Crawl doesn’t really break any new ground but it’s very good at what it does, and what it does is serve up a jumbo helping of tense thrills without outstaying its welcome. Pop it on next time you have friends around for beer and snacks, enjoy the laughs and gasps and watch food, beverages and furniture fly at the jumpy bits. SSP
