Moon Dogs
Review is on VultureHound which can be read
HERE. 2/5
What Happened to Monday
A science fiction story featuring over population and a deadly solution. I think we've heard this one before but its still great to see Noomi Rapace play seven sisters trying to survive. Named after each day of the week, each sister is allowed to go outside on their nominated day at the risk of being caught and taken to Child Allocation Bureau, which is basically a front of an organisation lead by Glenn Close. Seeing the sisters try and peice together what happened to Monday and then later Tuesday, is actually quite tragic, but its great they all have their own special skills to bring to the table. But as always with this sort of subject, there is a resolution for the characters, but no hint of a solution to the greater problem. 3/5
God's Own Country
Anyone who hasn't sen this brilliant piece of Britich cinema has been calling it or comparing it to another film by Ang Lee but seeing as this story is nothing like that film, I won't mention it anymore. Johnny helps is ill father run the family farm in Yorkshire. He lives in a cycle of early mornings, work, casual sex, drinking at the pub, sick at home and back to square one. Things change when Gheorghe, a Romanian farmhand arrives. Johnny doesn't seem to know how to be loved and he finds comfort and love from Gheorghe. He wants to be better but doesn't know how. Its not a story about growing up but learning how to show affection and emotion. Also the Yorkshire moors never looked more picturesque. 4/5
The Exception
Review is on VultureHound which can be read
HERE. 3/5
Carrie
Review is on VultureHound which can be read
HERE. 4/5
The Bad Batch
I was a big fan of
Ana Lily Amirpour's first film 'A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night' and was keen to see her second feature but...I have two great fears, the apocalypse and cannibals and The Bad Batch isn't exactly about the end of the world but it does feature a group cannibal body builders. Another desert set story, a wasteland, where criminals are left to die or survive. Suki Waterhouse's Arlen is soon caught and cut up but using her wits she escapes the cannibals minus an arm and a leg, she soon finds Comfort, a make shift settlement where people all hail the weird Dream, headed up by Keanu Reeves. But after Arlen takes revenge for her lost limbs, she ends up with a child in her care. One of the body builders, Jason Momoa's Miami Man comes looking for his lost daughter and finds Arlen instead. Its a strange horror, thriller slightly romantic even tale. 3/5
Mother!
How do you even begin to decode this film, especially with all the ridiculous hype around it. Some have hated it, calling it a 'bad movie', others have liked it, even enjoyed it. I'm stuck in the middle. I didn't like it but but I don't think its a bad film, I just feel that it makes women not look in control and ultimately just a puppet and there for a man's purpose. What I find fantastic is that no one is named in the film which actually helps the overall style and 'stories' of the film. A man, a poet, and his wife, who is also creative as she designed and decorated theie house, live in a country home away from everything else. They are disturbed one day by an unexpected visitor and a little later his hostile wife. Later their sons arrive and argue, ending in a tragic and violent incident. From here, its painfully obvious what is happening as soon as you know the film is about religion. There are smaller, clever references throughout that work far better than the chaotic second half where all the poet's 'followers' decend upon the house and a distraught and heavily pregnant wife aka Mother Nature, has to scamble through the madness. You can see what
Darren Aronofsky is trying to do but for me, Black Swan will always be something brilliant and cannot be outshadowed, not even with this hype heavy film. 3/5
The Invisible Guardian
I read the book (without knowing it was going to be a series) by
Dolores Redondo and always thought it would make a great TV series. A film was made instead but it was still exciting. The thrill of the chase mixed with the tragic deaths of young girls found in ritualistic ways, with a pair of shoes signalling there was another dead body, the killer has killed again. As I already knew the story, the sense of dread and excitement leading up to the arrest was less dramatic but the flashback scenes of Amaia remember her crazy mother were terrifying. This wasn't really captured in the book as well as it was on screen, adding to the tensions between sisters and pressure on the character to push aside her demons of the past. 3/5
