Reviews

I watched this movie thinking it was going to be about a heist, but what it's actually about is four young men very slowly, very deliberately ruining their lives. The plot unfolds at an almost excruciatingly snail's pace, which would be fine if you didn't know what was coming. As it is, there were times I felt physically sick during this film, the tension was just too much for me. It's was so upsetting to watch these basically likeable kids squander opportunity after opportunity to divert from the path they had chosen. You will them to do it, even though you know what's coming. You want them to make the right decisions, even though you know how it's going to end for them.

I can't honestly say I enjoyed even a minute of this nearly two-hour film, but I admired it a great deal. It's a real masterclass in tension, editing and there are some really solid performances from the lead actors. Evan Peters is probably the pick of the bunch, but Jared Abrahamson also does a really great job of portraying the conflict felt by his character - and by extension all the characters - in some of the key scenes. Barry Keoghan and Blake Jenner are also really good, although their roles didn't call for as much as the other two leads. Keoghan has an incredible presence on screen, I look forward to seeing more of him in the parts which are sure to follow his recent on-screen successes.

A special nod goes to the soundtrack also. It's been some time since a song hit me as hard as the Leonard Cohen number at the end, but the Donovan choice was also inspired.

I will never watch this film again, but I will remember it for the rest of my days.

So I read the reviews panning the series, and those praising it and I believed the ones which panned it and felt like the people praising it were shills; I was wrong.

Some of the criticisms I read were just plain nitpicky; for instance the common one about the Klingons. This show breathes new life into a tired and cliché race. Now don't get me wrong, I love the old Klingons, and I love to hate them, but they were of their time and needed an update, and this show gives it to them. Instead of having one-note bad guys, we see a complex, sympathetic culture intent on preserving their individuality and way of life against the Federation. Instead of every Klingon being a stereotypical violent, angry warrior, we see their thoughtful side and we see the inner politics of their culture that extends beyond them fighting each other like animals. It's fantastic, even the way they talk has improved, not everything is delivered in a braggadocios, angry snarl like the days of old.

These Klingons feel like a real alien race, not Russians on steroids and I love them for it.

I also really like the main character. I love Kirk, Picard and Sisko; but lets be honest - Sisko was gauche, Janeway was smug, but Michael Burnham is just the right level of restrained, yet unpredictable to make a great and compelling protagonist. I also like the dark, complex machinations of Lorca.

This show knows that in an age where Superman is a brooding idiot and Batman is a bigger brooding idiot, an idealistic show about a group of diverse people on a ship isn't going to get anyone's attention for very long, so they've made Star Trek dark. It's great, I love it.

OK, so the writing is clumsy, the exposition is clumsier and the science is faintly ridiculous (mycelium networks through space that let you travel anywhere, instantly? I might have bought that as a metaphor, but an actual universal network of mushrooms throughout space... a giant waterbear that you have to nipple-clamp to control the mycelium network, via spores...) Yeah, the science is utterly ridiculous, but it doesn't detract from the main drama, which is that of complex characters struggling against their own worse natures; that is what makes this show so compelling.

It also looks great. It's like a good mix between the sub-par new series of films, and the old Star Trek; it's slick, but not too slick, whilst retaining enough of the original to feel like some of the darker DS9 episodes when they were fighting the Jem'Hadar in the purpose- built defiant.

It's not like Ghostbusters: Answer the Call where they just did away with everything and made a mess of a film and stuck the Ghostbusters label on it at the end; this is still Star Trek, it's Star Trek as it has to be in the modern age.

It's not a betrayal, it's an evolution; and a necessary one.

Update: Having seen the final episodes I just wanted to update this review to say that the show is going in the wrong direction. The twist was absolutely jaw dropping, so to have them kill the object of the twist so easily and suddenly, was a big disappointment. The final episode was an abomination. It was everything that is wrong about Star Trek delivered in horrendous, saccharine overdose. Sentimental, preachy moralisation is why I tired of Voyager in the end, and why I genuinely couldn't sit through a single episode of Enterprise (and I tried, I really did). The writers have totally ruined the good work done early on in the series in order to beat people over the head with cloying propaganda, what a waste of a brilliant set up. If the series carries on down this childish route, then I'll be out for good.

The makers obviously think that this film is about a girl who gets repeatedly raped and abused, only to get her own back on her attackers. What this film is really about is how even good people can experience things that will make them turn into monsters themselves; and make no mistake, this girl becomes a monster.

Do these people deserve everything they get and more? A resounding yes. Did it make me happy to see them suffer as a consequences of their evil actions? No, not really; it made me very sad.

Why?

Because with every slash, we see more and more clearly that the person who began this film is gone forever, replaced by a psychotic monster hellbent on revenge. The ending - which I won't mention despite the spoiler tag - is presented as if it's supposed to be happy, but any idiot should be able to tell that this girl has done things she will never, ever be able to come back from. I honestly don't know whether it would have been kinder to kill her, rather than have her live the rest of her life as a monster who tortured and murdered people - even if these acts were well-deserved and the people 'had it coming' (they did, but that's not the point at all.)

You see, vengeance and justice are two very different things; by pursuing the path of vengeance she is taking on the part of God, and in doing so condemning herself forever. People can recover from inflicted tragedy, but they can never recover from their own actions, which stay with them forever.

In this film we see a girl become a monster, which is far more awful than anything inflicted on her up until that point. The saddest thing is that she chooses to become this way. You fully understand her choices, but you feel the tragedy of them nonetheless.

If Tina Fey had have been brutally dropped on her head as a baby and decided to write a horror film, having never seen one before in her drooling, cabbaged life; it might look something like this. Who on earth is this movie aimed at? Is it supposed to be a spooky morality tale, or a dark high school comedy for girls? Oddly enough, in trying to be both, it succeeds in neither. The writer's conceit reeks through this whole effort, they obviously thought they were being exceptionally clever with little references to the multiverse and having Jerry O'Connell (from Sliders) making a cameo; but the whole thing just screams 'amateurish overindulgence'. The tone of the movie is all over the place and the protagonist is an absolute psycho, even before she starts murdering people with a Chinese box; just so she can be popular. She's also perhaps the densest person known to man, singularly failing to realise what's happening as everything she wishes for comes true; and bizarrely, not taking advantage of the situation when it does. We're supposed to believe that a box has sat in a bin on the street untouched for ten, or more years, in a town where her father scavenges the same bins seemingly several times a week? Instead of prattling on about physics she doesn't understand, perhaps the writer could have spent some of that excessive brainpower on filling this egregious plot hole, and all the others besides. The soundtrack is without a doubt the most inappropriate, awful racket that has ever graced a so-called horror movie; it's like Sofia Coppola was ingested by Lena Dunham in some bizarre satanic union, and this music was the accidental result. I am very skeptical that this film has gotten so many nine and ten star reviews on this site - something is very rotten in the state of Denmark. I expect with Halloween coming up, we'll see a truer picture of how this movie is received as more and more people have the misfortune to actually watch it.

Plus points: Barb.

Future generations will study this movie as the dawn of a new age in film-making. It has everything you could possibly want out of two- and-a-half hours of cinematic, action-packed gold; and so much more besides. Anthony Hopkins giving the finger to the police outside downing street and calling random people 'dickheads'? Check. A mad, four-foot robot butler who kind-of- but-not-quite breaks the fourth wall by accompanying dramatic scenes with his own incidental music, before firing himself out of a World War II submarine torpedo chute to catch a brace of tuna, cooking and preparing them and setting up the bickering main characters on an underwater date, as they're being chased by the military, on their way to the crash site of a 1600 year-old underwater spaceship, which contains the grave of Merlin. Um, check. And speaking of which; a drunken Merlin (played by Stanley Tucci) riding through the ancient and dramatic British landscape on horseback, wielding a mystical staff that controls an Autobot dragon, who goes on to destroy some Saxons and save King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table from certain destruction? Check.

Historical note: the Saxons actually won that wider war, they went on to become the English. Arthur was actually Welsh, although at the time Welsh and Scottish people were all just 'Britons', of Celtic origin. The Welsh word for English is 'Saeson', which means Saxons. Most English people don't realise this, but the Celtic peoples have never forgotten how they were driven out of their lands all the way back in the Fifth-Century. In Scottish Gaelic the English are called 'Sassanach', which also means Saxon. Both languages are still spoken today. (Don't tell the English.)

These are just a few of the myriad delights this mad film has to offer, there are many more besides. The fact that it has only gotten a 15% 'fresh' rating on the site that gave Paul Feig's Ghostbusters 73% just goes to show what politically-motivated snobs movie critics are at heart. This is genuinely the freshest, funniest, most exciting and emotional film I have seen in years. No wonder people don't make excellent movies any more, when original works of wonder and imagination are met with sneering and contempt, by the same people who fawn over politically-motivated rehashes that offer little or nothing in the way of entertainment.

Whoever would have thought that in the year Alien: Covenant was released that two of the absolute best, most enjoyable movies released would be the fifth installment of the Transformers franchise and Kong: Skull Island. Two movies which - unlike others I have mentioned in this review - are perfect slices of awesome entertainment, without a hint of pretension.

Michael Bay has finally made the movie he's wanted to all his working life. If he had only gone half-way with this film, it would have been a mess. Thank goodness he went all in and served us up such a magnificent, rousing spectacle!

Autobots, unite!

This movie is a well-shot, well-acted low-budget paranoid psychological thriller with horror elements. Had it have been entitled something less misleading than 'It Comes at Night', I would have given it 8, possibly 9 stars out of 10. So why can't I give it 8, or 9 stars out of 10? Well, because absolutely NOTHING comes at night.

Oh I'm sure the director has a million clever little excuses to explain the fact that they lied to get people to watch this movie, by selling it as something it wasn't. I am equally sure that they are all disingenuous justifications, and that they deliberately gave their slow, but very well-made film a misleading title in order to trick people through the doors of the cinema into watching it.

I like films like this, I have plenty of patience with films that are slow-paced, but well-acted, as this one is. I like ambiguous films where the motivations of characters are unsure, and their situation not clear. I would have liked this movie so much more if I hadn't been sitting through it waiting for 'it' to come at night.

I cannot overstate how much this misleading title ruined my enjoyment of the film, or how annoyed I am that an otherwise enjoyable, slow-paced indie thriller, was ruined by money-men who didn't have enough confidence in their own film to let it stand on its own merits.

Good film, as long a you don't get fooled by the title.

1: Lighten up on the inspirational music. I thought I was watching a car advertisement, I really did.

2: Multi-faceted characters. All the characters in this movie are one-dimensional and none of them has any appreciable arc. Chris Pine's character starts off a heroic good guy, he ends up a heroic good guy. Same with Gal Gadot. How about you introduce a little tension and misunderstanding between Gadot and Pine early on? Make him more of an ambiguous character, a rough diamond who is generally decent but makes some selfish decisions, which Gadot disapproves of. She can be more haughty, high-minded and judgmental early on, believing in her own righteousness and thinking he is a scoundrel. As the movie goes on, Gadot discovers her own flaws but makes Pine want to become a better man. This makes the end scene more touching, as her influence over him has completed his arc, he makes a huge sacrifice because he believes in her and she in turn learns that people can be both bad and good, but are better when they have someone to admire. Her arc is similarly completed when she learns that she is not perfect, that she too is flawed, just like the people she previously looked down on.

3: Morality: The morality of this film is disturbing to say the least. Wonder Woman goes around murdering ordinary working class German men because they happen to be unfortunate enough to be conscripted into the wrong army, at the wrong time. But at the end of the film she spares the life of a truly evil, genocidal torturer - who deserves to die by anyone's reckoning. Pity is indeed a noble and important human attribute, but where was her pity for the ordinary working class men she murdered? Why does she feel pity for a genocidal maniac who deserves to die? How about instead of having her kill ordinary working class men who were just conscripted at the wrong time and in the wrong place, she shows them pity and mercy, and kills the genocidal torturer? Why make the message of the film that people are both good and bad, but have everyone hugging once Ares dies, as if they were all under a spell? The morality of this film is all over the place. If everyone hugs once Ares dies, just kill Ares and don't kill his unfortunate minions. Were they under a spell, or weren't they?

4. Ditch the theme music. Seriously; it's totally at odds with the character you're trying to represent. The director has chosen to make the main character a pure and inspirational goddess, but allowed her to be represented by the raunchy, aggressive theme music of an angry stripper on PCP. I get that the theme tune was composed for a different movie, under a different director, but does anyone else involved with the debacle? Leave the theme tune to the end credits, if you have to use it at all.

5. Don't have the Amazons fight like they have no clue about war. They have bows, they have the high ground, why did they jump off the cliffs only to get slaughtered on the beach? It doesn't matter how much technology advances in warfare, you don't give up the high ground, especially to an unknown enemy. By doing so, it undoes all the early work of the film which portrays them as fierce and capable warriors and makes them look like silly girls playing games. If you need to have a scene in which people are dying and Wonder Woman gets to both show off her fighting skills and be tragically rescued, make it an ambush. Watching the Amazons fling themselves from the cliffs was one of the most ridiculous things I've seen in a movie, almost as bad as the time James Bond surfed a tidal wave and equally cringe-worthy. Have them ambushed by the soldiers, you can have the same result with far more credibility and emotional resonance. It's difficult to feel too sorry for people who fling themselves off cliffs, shooting grappling arrows, only to Tarzan into a 8.22 mm round fired by a man with probably a fortnight's basic training. These women came across more Cirque Du Soleil than Amazon warrior, but on the plus side; if their island ever sinks under rising tides caused by global warming, they've got a steady career in Vegas just waiting for them. Three shows a day and all the shrimp they can eat. Yum.

6. The sidekicks were a confused mess. I'm not against the idea of having a disparate group of mercenaries all fighting for various things with ambiguous morality, in fact it was quite a good idea to teach Diana the nuance of human relationships and interactions. That said, the characters were poorly-fleshed out and didn't really serve much purpose. It felt like the director couldn't decide whether they wanted comedy sidekicks, or Saving Private Ryan type tragic soldiers, and so chose the former, but scripted the latter. What we ended up with was comedy sidekicks without the comedy, which was the worst of all worlds. My solution to this is simple, don't try to make them all individual characters with poorly thought out back-stories, that don't come to anything (like the sniper who couldn't shoot) - let them fulfill their destinies as comedy-sidekicks who make the audience laugh. You can still add serious moments, like when the Native American is talking about how his land was stolen by Chris Pine's people and Diana's criticism of his mercenary actions suddenly rings childish and hollow. That was a great moment, probably the best in the film in fact. By interspersing comedy banter with serious moments like those, you can created a much more powerful effect than by explicitly giving every one of them a tragic backstory, but never exploring it beyond hearing them complain a bit because you think it gives your movie substance.