The 2013 horror film Mama is neither memorable nor is it very scary: a cardinal sin for that genre. After a whole load of aborted yet tantalising attempts at remaking the Stephen King novel It (Will Poulter had a naturally evil face for Pennywise), the job falls to Mama's Andy Muschietti. By a wide margin, his take on the dancing clown/inter-dimensional fear monster is far more frightening, filled with disturbing, occasionally inspired visuals in the glommily filmed town of Derry.
Bill Skarsgård delivers a brilliant performance as the unsettling, moist-lipped clown. With a suspiciously saccharine voice and disjointed movements, he embodies an unnatural being of pure evil. Up against him are the Loser's club: seven young, promising actors, led by the angsty, stammering Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) and featuring the wisecracking Richie dolling out of the best lines (Stranger Things' Finn Wolfhard). There's actually a reasonable amount of humour - some of it extremely dark - but ultimately the tone of the film is often akin to Goonies or King's Stand By Me. Only instead of subterranean treasure they find a subterranean monster that preys upon their fears with symbolic forms like a pic'n'mix bag of horrifying irony. Only the home-schooled Mike (Chosen Jacobs) is given short shrift, joining the club late in the game and receiving comparatively minimal screen time.
The first half of the book is adapted faithfully and effectively, with the final title card of "Chapter One" offering confident confirmation of a sequel. After over two hours of consistent trouser-shitting, gluttons for punishment can rest easy. This probably modern classic will get a horror follow-up that we can have faith in, seeing as the only stumbling point of this inaugural part is some occasional, cynical 'loud-noise-so-jump-you-manipulated-dickhead'.
A strong FOUR stars. Get ready for a gaggle of Hallowe'en pillocks dressed up and whispering "Hi Georgie".
The Black List is a collection of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood, featuring the likes of American Hustle and Spotlight to name a few. How The Hitman's Bodyguard managed to get onto that list when the script is the weakest aspect of the film is more than a little perplexing. The dialogue is reliant on excessive swearing and barely contains a decent joke. Profane prose can work well when it's creative (such as Ryan Reynold's Deadpool), but a simple "motherfucker" or twelve thrown around by Salma Hayek hardly constitutes creative writing. As for plot, the arcs and call backs are foreseeable (will Reynolds get back with his ex?!) and the villain is so pantomime it's a shock to see Gary Oldman waste his time as an extremely generic eastern-European dictator.
After a brilliant Bodyguard parody poster, it's a disappointment to see Reynolds and Samuel L Jackson set adrift with only their charisma to use as a paddle as they attempt to get back to shore. They nearly drown. The Odd Couple chemistry is fine, but when Jackson spends half of the run time cackling like a coke-fueled clown (the It review is en route), you'd want to be able to laugh as well. Only a bus full of nuns can create a slight smile. A lot of the film is po-faced action straight out of a lesser Neeson flick and and human rights subplot, and with such an emphasis on (occasionally slapstick) action, it's questionable whether or not it'd be better as a straight action.
The saving grace is Patrick Hughes' action direction, superior to his lacklustre Expendables 3. Here there are explosions, speedboats and motorbikes, with an exceptionally entertaining tracking scene of hand-to-hand kitchen/hardware shop carnage. It's effective, but the climax is tacked on excessively after the film's natural conclusion. When you have such a game cast with natural comedic ability, someone has to take the bullet for them. Screenwriter Tom O'Conner looks like a good candidate.
Nearly TWO STARS. No wonder we've recently had the worst box office weekend in 16 years when this was the quality on offer.
Adapting Over 4500 pages of Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Western literature is something of a mammoth task with the guarantee of alienating at least some fans. Creating a sequel to the books is an unusual move which seems to have - shockingly - offended long time fans. For casual viewers, The Dark Tower is a perfectly adequate genre piece with a lean story.
Idris Elba is Roland the Gunslinger pitted against The Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey). The latter and his army of body-snatcher-ish demons attempts to bring down the pivotal, titular tower. Young actor Tom Taylor makes a somewhat promising film debut as a young boy who holds the key to destroying the tower. Elba is blandly stoic at times, but as the film proceeds he does appear to carry some grief in his eyes. McConaughey is always effortlessly charming, and his curt villain is refreshingly blunt at times. However, as he uses more magic, the black shirt, deep collar and hand waving is unintentionally like a demented David Copperfield.
Visually Nikolaj Arcel pulls off a slick finale, although some dimly lit set-pieces in the middle are something of an eye-strain. It may hit plot beats we've seen many times before (a thinly written step-dad prick, the powered protagonist is hooked up to a device that exploits them, for example) and feature completely uninspired dialogue save for the grandiose Stephen King lines, but at a mere 95 minutes, it's completely, absolutely, positively and utterly average.
THREE STARS. It will probably be better.
Armed with a naturally Grinch-y face and a deliciously vile character, Will Poulter is easily the standout in Katheryn Bigelow's latest fact-based, libel-dodging masterclass in excruciating tension. Despite a hefty run time which sees the context surrounding the 1967 riots, a group of black men and white women harassed by the police one nightmarish night and the aftermath, Detroit is always tight as a drum. Bigelow never gives a moment's respite for the audience as soon as an unusual and potentially misjudged title sequence which seems incongruous to the rest of the film.
Whilst John Boyega delivers a sensitive performance (playing a discomforted security guard acting as a reluctant passenger to the police brutality) amongst a crowd of talented actors, it is Poulter who dominates the film, covering and justifying his racist actions at every turn no matter what the cost to civil liberty. In between violent outbursts and threatening gestures, Poulter gives the - thankfully - fictional policeman expressions showing the inner weakness and fear as he realises the consequences of his crimes. Even when he smiles he unsettles. After The Revenant and this, he's definitely putting himself in a good position to grab some exceptional offers.
FOUR STARS. It was ballsy for her to release an awards film in August, and a shame it has lost money.
Since Magnolia, Tom Cruise hasn't stepped outside of his wheelhouse of characterisation too much, save for a Tropic Thunder here or there. As conniving airline pilot/CIA spy/drug runner Barry Seal, the demented little space zealot retains his usual effortless charisma whilst playing around with an accent and an extremely watchable shiftiness as he desperately tries to juggle his many crimes and duties with conflicting group. It would have been nice if Cruise could have adopted a paunch or beer belly to play the tubby real life figure, but presumably he couldn't rock up to MI:6 like that. They've already had enough issues with Henry Cavill's moustache.
Sarah Wright fairs okay as the typical 'wife-of-a-crook' in a rise and fall of an anti-hero narrative (see some Scorsese spouses), but never really makes much of an impression. The increasingly (and justly) popular Domhnall Gleeson does as Barry's handler; he's warmly calculating, and then suddenly he's coldly aloof as shit hits the Areostar propeller. A late gag involving his character's work post-Seal is played just for laughs, but it does highlight the fact that this true story is somewhat embellished.
But then again...who cares? The broad facts are there, and the sheer insanity of the broad story translates well in scenes where Barry casually gets away with multiple transgressions and inadvertently finds himself at the heart of all of the major political events of the early 80s. How better for Doug Liman to match the casual nonsense going on by applying handheld camerawork and bump zooms for an almost deliberately chaotic and amateurish style. Admittedly, the film does take a trip as it steps up into darker territory, but the colourful madness that came before is still wonderful.
FOUR STARS. Seriously why not just use a prosthetic belly and sacrifice those shirtless digging shots? The man weighed 280 pounds and Tom Cruise looks like an ageless Demi-God.
