Cowboys - BFI Flare

 

When Jo and his father disappear in the middle of the night, his mother calls the police and soon there is a search party out looking for him. Born a girl, Jo knows he is a boy and only his father seems to understand him. But his father has his own his issues to deal with, taking pills to help his mental health, he just wants his son to be happy. But choosing to take drastic measures to ensure that, doesn’t always end well.

 

Transgender children have been a more recent topic of conversation, in magazines, newspapers, TV shows, documentaries and of course all-over social media. The debate whether children should be allowed to transition at a young age still goes on and varies from country to country. But the first step before all this is the child coming forward and saying they are transgender. Various films over the recent years have created stories around this subject but there hasn’t be one (that I can think of) that has the father of a transgender child escape into the wilderness so that they can protect them. Cowboys is a story about Jo and his parents, Troy and Sally and how they act.

 

Sasha Knight who plays Jo is a revelation. Comfortably fitting into the character and finding the vulnerable and joyful aspects. The most tender and heartfelt stand out moments in the film are definitely between Knight and Steve Zahn who plays Troy. The chemistry between the actors is what makes this film a delight to watch. Jillian Bell also shows she isn’t just a comedy actress as Jo’s distraught mother, Sally.

The desperate nature of both Troy and Sally and trying to understand who they are is given equal time on screen as well as Jo’s own story. Although we learn through fragmented flashback scenes as to how the father and son ended up on the run, on horseback in the wilderness, we never really see Jo’s quieter moments or his journey to how he knew he was a boy in a girl’s body. All of this is off screen and we are shown him uncomfortable in dresses and arguments with his mother. These would have been vital scenes if this was just about Jo but as this was about an action with consequences, Jo’s personal journey is not included in the story.

 

Watch List: August & September

Apartment 1BR

Full review can be read HERE. 3/5 

 

The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day 

The first film is a cult classic and is just such a brilliant film, how do you top that? Well, you make a sequel that makes nearly no sense whatsoever and you bring back familiar faces and replace Willem Dafoe because he was most likely busy. This time, a hitman is hired by the mafia to murder a priest to bring the Saints back to Boston so they can have revenge BUT of course when The Saints arrive, with new pal Romeo as their sidekick, things do not go according to plan. There are moments of hilarity and ridiculous scenarios as well as amsuing details such as the emphasis on the hitman's height but this is the world of The Saints here so you have to expect the weird stuff. 3/5

 

Room

The harrowing story of a woman kept captive for years in a shed with the only positive part of her life, her young son is a film I didn't run to see at the cinema. Mainly because of the story and the real-life story that inspired it. Brie Larson is brilliant in the film as is the breakout star Jacob Tremblay as Jack, their bond and chemistry is the obviously the heart and soul of the film. Seeing the story unfold through Jack's eyes brings a new perspective on this type of story and I can see why there was so much hype around the film when it was first released. Waiting all this time to see it, I don't think took anything away, but the kidnapping and the strain everything put upon Larson's Ma is so painful to watch. Jack has his life ahead of him but Ma will be forever scarred and forever in pain and fear, even with time and I can't let that go. 4/5

 

12 Monkeys

 After years of this film sitting in my ‘to watch’ pile (in my mind) I finally got the film I had heard so much about. A science fiction thriller from Terry Gilliam, when he was making great films, is hard to resist. Of course, this is a film that resonates now more than ever, revolving round a disease that was spread in 1996 driving what remained of the human race underground. Future man Bruce Willis is time travelled back in time to find out who is responsible for the virus getting out and, in that time, makes friends with crazy Brad Pitt and scientist Madelaine Stowe with fixed effects. It’s a pretty damn good film despite making me feel uneasy in the state we all find ourselves in. 3/5

Tenet

I went to support the film that was meant to welcome people back to cinemas and I still stand by this, but, this film, was not a masterpiece. Nolan has some great ideas but how executes them is with varying success. Inception was about dreams and our perception of reality, here he cross the time travel line but it isn’t really a time travel story, it’s about time inverted….WHAT?! Starting with a fantastic opening scene pumped full of adrenalin but then quickly morphed into a sequence of fast dialogue heavy scenes that do not set up the story and does not explain anything. Literally, nothing. The only hint, a drawing but that is actually pointless too. There were too many scenes you can’t hear dialogue whether that was part of it all or not. Granted, there are some fantastic visuals but the overall reason for why things are happening is just, weak. There were also quite a few plot holes which I felt were set up in a film set before this one which we will never get to see. 2/5

Beanpole

 Full review can be read HERE. 4/5

 

Schemers

 Full review can be read HERE. 2/5

 

Night School

 I usually avoid Kevin Hart vehicles but this has Tiffany Haddish in it so I needed to see it. A fun silly comedy about a guy who struggled with school loses his job and can’t get another without a GED so he goes to night school to get one, meets group of kooky characters each with their own personalities and stories, hides his schooling from his successful girlfriend, is taught by the brilliant Haddish and has to overcome an old rivalry with a guy who knew in and now is the principle of their old high school. It’s all fun and games and dramatically plays down the fact that his character has learning difficulties that had gone unnoticed by his teachers when he was at school, but I suppose that would have been a whole other film with less laughs. 3/5

The Babysitter: Killer Queen

I have a habit of seeing sequels first but with this Netflix film, I didn’t think I needed to see the first film, but now I’ve seen this, I will go back to the start. As far as horror comedies go, this was very fun, ridiculous and I could immediately get into it despite everything that was going on. Picking up a few years later and Cole, still traumatised and trying to move on from the last film’s events decides it’s a great idea to go with his ‘best friend’ knock off blonde from next door and her friends to a lake. Of course, things go very wrong when the ghosts of the cult rise up and try and kill him again. There are flashbacks to how and why everyone joined the cult that are very amusing and silly as well as a very excellent dance scene in place of a sex scene that is better left watched and unspoiled. Cole also has a buddy along for the night of terrors, the equally mysterious and traumatised Phoebe which means our troubled boy has someone to share his story with. 3/5

 

Scottish Mussel

A wholesome British rom-com that is both impossibly sweet, slightly predictable and something rare all at the same time. Directed (and starring) Talulah Riley, her debut as the former is what you’d expect from the genre but just feels like a new voice that barely got heard. I don’t think this gem enjoyed enough if any attention at the cinema beyond the UK borders (please correct me if I’m wrong). When Ritchie and his friends end up mistaken for pearl thieves, the small-time criminal decides stealing rare Scottish pearls might be a way to make money. But after volunteering at the wild life centre to gain access prime mussel spots, he starts spending more time with Beth, the very passionate conservationist and he begins to change his mind. Unlucky for him, local gangsters have also taken an interest in the pearls too. 4/5

What to Expect From 'The Boys' season two

Ending the last season on cliffhangers all round for the characters, there's quite a bit to expect to unfold in the upcoming season. After the teasers, clips and full trailer, plus the panal from Comic Con @ Home, I've out together what we can expect from season two.

My full article can be read over at Zavvi HERE. 

For all those looking forward to the new season the count down begins until September 4th!

 

Apartment 1BR

One of the most stressful things you can ever do is moving house. It doesn’t matter if your new place is rented, furnished, bought, needs work done to it, it will always be stressful. Even when you’re moved in, everything is in its place, there’s the neighbours to meet, the neighbourhood to explore, everything is new and takes getting used to. ‘Apartment 1BR’ takes this feeling to a whole new level.

 

Having just moved to a new city to start afresh, take a course and work on her costume designs, Sarah moves into her new apartment with a tight knit, yet welcoming community of neighbours. At first, everything is going well for Sarah but she just can’t get a decent night’s sleep. This impacts her work, her attitude, she distances herself from her family and even turns down a dinner party with her new neighbours. But there is something even more sinister going on behind closed doors, something that she is about to be a part of, whether she likes or not.

 

SPOILERS

 

From the outset there is something off putting about the neighbours and the apartment. Its literally too good to be true but the catch doesn’t come until later. Setting itself up to be story about a haunting or possession of some kind, particularly with the weird noises that only seem to affect Sarah’s apartment, the film twists this expectation on its head to something unusual, despite the obvious signs when you think back or go in for a second viewing.

 

The story slips back into the horror thriller genre very comfortably between the torture ‘treatment’ scenes and the realisation that this is what everyone went through when they moved into the building. The initiation process is the most gruelling, with every step she takes deeper into the group’s beliefs. But the truly horrific moments are when she watches and lets her old friend go through everything she did, all seen on monitors which are placed around the entire building. Of course, the spine-chilling moments are taken up a notch when a set of cameras are seen in the CCTV room and the question of who is watching them watch everyone else doesn’t pay off until the very end. It’s a very clever and subtle moment of realisation for Sarah and it’s just an image that speaks volumes.

 

Sarah is a prime target for a radical delusional group, complete with a book written by a ‘great man’ years before, is reminiscent of other films abouts cults and even real ones, why is there always a book involved with cults? ‘Apartment 1BR’ bears a strong resemblance to ‘The Invitation’, another film about a cult, both are subtle and restrained, creating an uneasy sense of dread. Although, ‘Apartment 1BR’ has the advantage of tricking the viewer they are about to watch a completely different film.

 

As a production plagued by disasters, the film comes out unscathed. Resisting the trend of other films of the same genre, the story and characters really explore the fact that real horror is other people no matter where you find yourself.

 

 

Ladyworld - London Film Festival

Mysterious event resulting in 8 girls being trapped in a house. Fighting for survival and their sanity, with water and food running out, how will they cope in such claustrophobic conditions?


Previously published on Vulturehound HERE.

There are some stories that need to be told. From the urgency the writer writes dialogue, from the vivid tone of the film, from the atmospheric feel of the film and so. There are also some stories that don’t need to be told, or rather aren’t sure whether they are a story or not. ‘Ladyworld’ is such a film.

 
After a literal earth shattering event, resulting in a house being buried underground, eight teenage girls are left trapped. With limited amount of food and no water, no electricity and little hope, they fend for themselves. Descending into chaos, they all start to loose their minds.

 
Usually a film with eight female protagonists would be something to celebrate but instead of a story with great characters, we are treated to a serious lack of plot and characters that don’t seem to know what they’re doing, playing up to one adjective and nothing else. The girls at first try to create order and simple rules to stay alive, voting a leader, Olivia, who suggests that they keep the phone batteries going, check the fuse box regularly and find water. None of this happens as another girl, Piper, the very obvious antagonist from the start, thwarts these rules in favour of ridiculous speeches, war paint (bad make up) and making her followers do whatever she says. The groups are clear and its rather predictable what will happen next, in a general sense. The groups claim a room each, Piper’s crazy faction getting worse by the minute, while Olivia’s group, the sensible Blake and the hysterical Dolly who is VERY attached to her doll, camp out in the living room, patiently waiting. The hysteria hightens every time one of the girls claims to have seen the ‘man’ in the house. At first it seems like the ‘man’ is a delusion, later tactic but the answer is revealed near the end and seems anticlimactic.

 
Taking place in one location, the house the girls are trapped in, its not quite clear why. The house looks barely lived in, apart from furniture and a few pieces of art on the wall. It is assumed they are all there for a party, a birthday for Eden, who mysteriously disappears near the start after saying she saw the ‘man’. But as not all the girls seem to know each other, its frustratingly unclear how they ended up there. The lack of clarity distracts from whatever the story is with these girls, who later say they are women with Piper leading a disturbing song ‘Ladies of the Canyon’, but they act like crazed children. While the rest of the girls harp on their basic characters, only Ariela Barer as Olivia feels like she is actually playing a character that is more than two dimensional. She is the realistic one of the group but when even she starts to let the cabin fever set in, its believable and actually really stressful.

 
Directed and co-written by Amanda Kramer, it would be interesting to know what Kramer was aiming for or what she was hoping to portray with ‘Ladyworld’. One way to look at this film is as very loose interpretations ‘Lord of the Flies’ but this is a thin analysis of a film that just shows the worst of girls. It could be taken as damaging portrayal of young women, reducing us, them to nasty and incapable of surviving without help. I’m hoping that there is a method behind the madness, but there is a fear that this would not be obvious to everyone.